1200-1400[1] Great prehistoric city grows and thrives on banks of Warrior River, West-Central Alabama. 1500[1] City deserted. 1897 Town of Carthage, white settlement at site of deserted city, renamed Moundville because of numerous Indian mounds within its limits. 1905-1906 First archaeological excavations made at Moundville by Clarence B. Moore of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. 1923 Moundville Historical Society organized to arouse interest in preservation of mounds. Mrs. Jeff Powers, Jr., President. 1929 Alabama Museum of Natural History begins archaeological investigations at Moundville after purchasing 175 acres which include most of the 40 mounds in that area. 1933 Mound State Park established with the aid of the Federal Emergency Conservation Work Agency. 1935 Temporary museum building constructed at Mound State Park. 1938-39 Alabama Museum purchases additional land, enlarging Mound State Park to 301 acres which includes all the mounds in the area. 1938 Mound State Park renamed Mound State Monument. Civilian Conservation Corps, directed by National Park Service and the Alabama Museum of Natural History, begins large-scale development of area. 1939 May 10, New Archaeological Museum dedicated. 1947 September 24, Dedication of Laboratory Unit of Erskine Ramsay Archaeological Research Center. 1949 Completion of Picnic Building: Memorial to Nelson Jones. [1]Approximate dates. MOUND STATE MONUMENT • _OPEN ALL YEAR_ • [Illustration: Museum building] _A blisful lyf, a paisible and a swete, Ledden the peples in the former age_ —_Chaucer, Former Age, line 2_ The Black Warrior River winds slowly among the rolling southern foothills. On the banks of this river many centuries ago there flourished a great Indian metropolis. Here dwelt a pleasant and contented people whose story is not of warring braves but of peaceful artisans. Theirs were days not of strife and treachery, but of quiet toil and worship. These people, given to pottery-making and the building of fine temples, have vanished long ago. The eloquence of their handiwork endures. Their pottery, lodged in the muddy earth, emerges as fresh proof that “a thing of beauty is a joy forever”. Their temples, decayed these many years, are yet in evidence, for the pyramidal substructures of these temples—earth mounds of imposing size and number—remain.