Description : Indian Mound Cemetery is a cemetery located along the Northwestern Turnpike (U.S. Route 50) on a promontory of the "Yellow Banks" overlooking the South Branch Potomac River and Mill Creek Mountain in Romney, West Virginia, United States. The cemetery is centered on a Hopewellian mound, known as the Romney Indian Mound. Indian Mound Cemetery is also the site of Fort Pearsall, the Confederate Memorial, Parsons Bell Tower, and reinterments from Romney's Old Presbyterian Cemetery. The cemetery is currently owned and maintained by the Indian Mound Cemetery Association, Inc. The Romney Indian Mound was constructed at what was once the crossroads of the Shawnee Trail, running north and south, and the east-west Indian Road (later the Northwestern Turnpike and U.S. Route 50) leading to the Allegheny Mountains. The original owner of the mound, David Gibson, gave the site to the city of Romney on the condition that the mound would not be disturbed. For this reason, the city has never allowed the mound to be excavated. The Smithsonian Institution suggests the Romney Indian Mound possibly dates from between 500 and 1000 CE given the ages of similar mounds it excavated in the Eastern Panhandle. The mound was likely constructed by peoples of the Hopewell culture, who resided within West Virginia between 500 BC and 1,000 CE. The Romney Indian Mound is perhaps the only accessible mound east of the Allegheny Mountains that has been preserved. This is mostly due in part to both its location high above the flood plain of the South Branch Potomac River and that it was never plowed over.
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