Long before Forest Hill became Madison’s premier romantic cemetery, a very different form of burial was practiced on the land upon which the cemetery now stands. Within the Forest Hill Cemetery grounds are several Native American effigy mounds. These mounds remind us that land on which Forest Hill Cemetery sits was a sacred space long before the establishment of Madison. The effigy mounds are physical reminders of the ways in which the places we inhabit today have meanings that reach across groups and through time.

In this section you can explore the effigy mounds in Forest Hill Cemetery and in the greater Madison area as well. Each of the three sections presents the mounds in a different way. In “History of the Mounds” you will find the background information necessary to understand what the effigy mounds are and what they have meant within Wisconsin’s history. “Reading the Mounds” is designed to function as a field guide. Using Forest Hill Cemetery as an example, it provides information about the meanings, forms, and alignment of the various mounds you will encounter in Madison. Finally, the section “Visiting the Mounds” contains short entries for many of Madison’s famous mound groups. Armed with these guides, we hope that you will take the opportunity to visit some of Madison’s oldest and most valuable sacred spaces.