How St. Louis became known as 'Mound City' despite settlers razing those monuments

St. Louis on the Air

Cahokia Mounds in Collinsville hosts about 350,000 visitors each year. Much less well-known are the sites where 27 monuments once stood in St. Louis. The mounds, carefully constructed and engineered by Indigenous people between 800-1350 CE, were destroyed by white settlers to make way for urban development during the 19th century. In her new book “Mound City,” historian Patricia Cleary details the history of those mounds, the strange paradox of local settlers claiming the moniker of “Mound City” while destroying them, and their contribution to the cultural identity of St. Louisans and Americans across the country today.