Letchworth-Love Mounds Archaeological State Park is a Florida state park in Jefferson County, Florida, about west of Monticello. It preserves the Letchworth-Love Mounds, a Woodland period mound complex on a low sandy rise near the southwestern shore of Lake Miccosukee. The site is recorded in the Florida Master Site File, the state's inventory of historical and archaeological resources, under the Smithsonian trinomial 8JE337. Its principal earthwork, Mound 1, stands about tall and is the tallest prehistoric Native American earthwork in Florida. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2010.
The complex was built and occupied chiefly by the Swift Creek and Weeden Island cultures between roughly , with most mound construction falling in the early Weeden Island period. At least seven mounds survive within the park, set around a central plaza with an adjoining habitation area; historical accounts describe as many as 28 mounds across the wider site. Excavations in the habitation area have uncovered a Woodland-period house whose radiocarbon dates place it in the fifth or sixth century AD. Lying near the geographic center of the Weeden Island culture area, Letchworth is distinctive among the culture's major ceremonial centers, most of which stand at its margins.
The mound was described in print as early as 1931 and noted in 1939 by the historian Mark F. Boyd, who called it the "Miccosukee mound"; even so, the land remained in private, largely agricultural ownership and was not recorded as an archaeological site until 1975. The state assembled the park through purchases in 1992 and 2005, and it is managed by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection Division of Recreation and Parks.
Beyond the mounds, the park protects a mosaic of upland woodland and wetland communities in the Tallahassee Hills that shelter several rare and imperiled species, and it lies within the Florida Wildlife Corridor. It is open for hiking, birding, picnicking, and wildlife viewing, with an interpretive pavilion and an elevated platform overlooking Mound 1.
Name The park is named for the Letchworth-Love Mounds (8JE337), the archaeological site it protects. The "Letchworth" part of the name comes from Larry R. and Rosa C. Letchworth, the former private owners of the land on which the principal mound sits. The state bought the land from them in 1992 as part of the P-2000 and CARL land-conservation programs. Earlier writers referred to the principal earthwork by other names: the historian Mark F. Boyd called it the "Miccosukee mound" in 1939, and the archaeologist Hale G. Smith the "Lake Miccosukee Mound" in 1951. In archaeological literature the site is also called "Letchworth Mounds" or simply "Letchworth".
History Discovery and early documentation The earliest known publication of the site comes from June 1931, when an article in the Tallahassee Daily Democrat by Bob Evans described Mound 1 as the largest known Indian mound in Florida. Evans reported that members of the Tallahassee post of the American Legion were working to preserve the mound, and noted that four excavation pits had already been dug into its top. The following year, on January 21, 1932, members of the Florida Geological Survey visited the mound; a photograph taken during that visit shows W. F. Yarborough at its base and J. Clarence Simpson at its summit, and is now preserved in the Florida State Archives. In a 1939 article on Spanish mission sites, the historian Mark F. Boyd listed a pyramidal earthwork he called the "Miccosukee mound", about half a mile west of Lake Miccosukee and south of U.S. Highway 90, and observed that it "may actually lie in Jefferson county".
Despite this early attention, the land stayed under private ownership and the site was not recorded until April 1975, when Jeanne Fryman noted that six of the eight smaller mounds had been disturbed by farming. Landowners told her of 10 to 20 additional mounds in the woods toward Lloyd Creek. Fryman noted that six of the eight smaller mounds had been disturbed by farming. By then much of the property had seen agricultural and forestry use, including cattle grazing behind wire fencing; plowing had cut into the largest mound, and one of the smaller mounds had been destroyed during the 1970s.
State acquisition On June 30, 1992, the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund bought a tract of about from Larry R. and Rosa C. Letchworth, drawing on the P-2000 and Florida Conservation and Recreation Lands (CARL) programs. The tract was leased to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), Division of Recreation and Parks, for management on October 21, 1996. A second purchase of about from Hurley H. Booth on August 29, 2005, enlarged the park to its present .
Archaeology The mound complex Within the state park, the site extends across roughly and contains at least seven surviving mounds, together with a plaza, a former habitation area, and a pond, which may originally have been a borrow pit dug to supply earth for mound construction. A 1997 letter from the archaeologist Calvin Jones placed the overall total at 28 mounds in and around the site, about a dozen of them on private land to the south and east.
Individual mounds The 2019 unit management plan documents seven standing mounds within the state park, numbered 1 through 7, along with related mound components outside the current park boundary that have been recorded historically or destroyed before state acquisition.
+ Standing mounds at Letchworth-Love Mounds (8JE337) Mound Shape Dimensions Function Condition 1 Truncated pyramid with ramp, aprons, and platform tall Ceremonial Fair 2 Rectangular ~ × , less than tall Possible residential platform Good 3 Conical ~ diameter, less than tall Not specified Fair 4 Oval ~ diameter, less than tall Not specified Good 5 Oval diameter, tall Not specified Fair 6 Oval diameter, tall Mortuary Fair 7 Low sand mound Not specified Not specified Good Source: . Condition uses the FDEP Good/Fair/Poor scale.
Mound 1, the principal earthwork, is a flat-topped pyramidal mound of the kind archaeologists call a platform mound: a ramp climbs its northern side, low apron-like extensions flank it to the east and west, and a broad platform projects to the south. Standing about high, it is the tallest prehistoric earthwork in Florida. Radiocarbon evidence indicates that it was raised in three stages, beginning after the late third or early fourth century AD. In 1951 Smith observed that it stood about ten feet higher than the largest mound at Lake Jackson.
Mound 2, in front of the former Letchworth house, is a low mound of roughly rectangular outline whose form has been read as a base that once carried dwellings. Mound 3 appeared only as a symbol marked "Indian mounds possible mounds" on Jones's 1987 sketch map and was not accurately mapped until the 2002–03 survey, when it was located close to the present parking area and pavilion; clearing under private ownership had reshaped its outer slope. Mound 4, a small oval feature little touched by modern activity, was noticed by Louis Tesar during the 2002–03 survey as vegetation was cleared along the south edge of Mound 1. Mound 5, the tallest of the low mounds and oval in plan, has been disturbed by agricultural plowing. Mound 6, also oval, is interpreted in the management plan as a burial mound and has likewise been affected by farming and silviculture. Mound 7, immediately east of Mound 6, is the most recent discovery; the University of South Florida located it through archaeological sensitivity modeling after a prescribed burn removed the dense shrub layer, and no artifacts were visible on the surface when it was recorded.
Other mounds once tied to the complex either lie beyond the modern park or no longer exist. The Sun Ray Road Mound (8JE133), recorded in 1972 by the archaeologist James J. Miller, was a small conical burial mound of yellow sand, about high and across, just east of the original Letchworth tract; it was destroyed during land leveling in the 1980s.
Jones's 1987 sketch map also placed three mounds on what is now state land, allegedly where the landowner recalled them being located since by this point, they had already been destroyed by land clearing. The 2002–03 survey team designated these locations CJ-A, CJ-B and CJ-C, to be numbered only if confirmed, and found no mound remains at any of them.
Chronology and cultural affiliation Artifacts from the site suggest that humans used the area at least intermittently for as long as 10,000 years, though the majority date to the Weeden Island period. A 2003 survey of the southern portion of the park, which mapped its topography and sampled buried soil through systematic auger testing (boring small test holes into the ground), suggested from indirect evidence gathered outside the mounds that they were most likely built during the earlier phases of the Weeden Island period (AD 200–900); the recovered assemblage is detailed below (see § Artifacts).
Located near the geographic center of the Weeden Island cultural area, Letchworth is distinctive among the culture's known ceremonial centers. Other major Weeden Island ceremonial centers include the McKeithen site in Columbia County, Florida and Kolomoki in Early County, Georgia, along with, possibly, Crystal River; all lie at the peripheries of the cultural area rather than at its center.
Domestic architecture During the 2019–2020 field season, excavations directed by University of Michigan archaeologist Martin Menz uncovered a Woodland-period residential structure at the site. This structure is a significant find, as it is one of only a handful of such structures identified in the Gulf Coastal Plain. Most of its postholes were about across, indicating a frame of narrow, bent ("flexed") poles rather than rigid upright posts. The building measured approximately in diameter and enclosed about of interior space, with a central hearth and six interior storage pits. Radiocarbon dates on features in the structure cluster around cal AD 420–637, placing residential use at the site in the fifth and sixth centuries AD. Of the Woodland-period houses Menz compared from ceremonial centers in the region, the Letchworth structure is the only one built with flexed poles, which Menz associates with lower labor investment, shorter-term occupation, and greater mobility.
Artifacts Artifacts were recovered throughout the survey area during the 2003 survey. Stone (lithic) artifacts accounted for approximately 79 percent of the total assemblage, ceramics for 16 percent, and a smaller quantity of clay, animal bone, and other material for the remainder. No historic-period artifacts were recovered during the survey. Fewer than six percent of the recovered artifacts were diagnostic, meaning distinctive enough in style to be assigned to a particular period or culture. Of those, about 77 percent dated to the Weeden Island period and 14 percent to the Deptford period, while the Fort Walton period was represented by only two plain body sherds. Across all diagnostic artifacts noted at the site, the report gives 96 percent (1,340 pieces) as Weeden Island, 3 percent (35) as Deptford, and 1 percent (19) as Fort Walton.