Giant Bones in West Virginia


When the Bible famously declared that “there were giants on the earth in those days,” in Genesis 6:4, the writer wasn’t kidding—especially when it comes to West Virginia. In the early days of our nation, people routinely unearthed giant bones in the Mountain State.

Giant Bones

Countless newspapers and county histories in the 1800s told the story of giant bones. Stories such as these were commonplace:

“It is said that a jawbone was plowed up near Moorefield which would pass over the outside of a common man's lower jaw; that it contained eight jaw teeth on either side, and that they sat transversely in their sockets. A bone of that size would have belonged to a man eight or nine feet high… Another jawbone of enormous size is recorded as having been discovered near Martinsburg.”

Hu Maxwell and H. L. Swisher, History of Hampshire County West Virginia from Its Earliest Settlement to the Present (Morgantown, WV: A. Brown Boughner, 1897)

“While digging a grave on Trace Fork, Lincoln County, a few days ago, the bones of a human being of gigantic stature and proportions were exhumed. The skeleton is in a good state of preservation and the outlines of the frame sufficiently defined to determine that the stature of the person must have been nine or ten feet. The skull and other bones also indicate prodigious size.”

“There were Giants in Those Days,” Arizona Republican, February 27, 1892.

"Giant Town"

Going all the way back to 1774, Tucker County resident Jack Parsons saw giant bones protruding from the ground after the Cheat River had overflowed its banks. This occurred in an area along the river known as the Horse Shoe. Here, Parsons pulled a femur from the ground. He compared it to his own and it was seven inches longer. He removed the remaining bones and laid them out. The person would have stood at eight feet when alive. Moreover, the lower jawbone fit completely over his face.1 

Nearby, there was an ancient village that contained many relics as well as earthen and stone mounds. Other settlers uncovered large skeletons as well, and the area earned the nickname “Giant Town.”

Marion County Finds

There are several accounts in which early residents of Marion County found giant bones along the Monongahela River. Glen Lough wrote the following in his book Now and Long Ago: A History of the Marion County Area:

Mrs. Shearer told Adam O Heck that schoolmaster John Beall settled here a very long time ago, and she remembered him clearly, and that when he first came here to live he found four human skeletons where Palatine is now, that—people supposed—had been washed from their graves by floods, their graves being near the river. She said she had heard that these skeletons were, every one, eight feet long, and that John Beall had measured them before digging a grave and reburying them.

She said also that three skeletons were found at the mouth of the Paw Paw Creek many years later, while Nim (Nimrod) Satterfield was justice of the peace. Jim Dean and some men were digging for a bridge foundation and found these bones at the lower end of the old buffalo wallow. She thought it was Dr. Kidwell, of Fairmont, who examined them and said they were very old, perhaps thousands of years old. She said that when the skeletons were exposed to the weather for a few days, their bones turned black and began to crumble, that Squire Satterfield had them buried in the Joliffe graveyard (Rivesville). All these skeletons, she said, were measured, and found to be about eight feet long.

According to some accounts, the skeletons were three in number and each had strands of hair still attached to the skulls—red hair.

Interestingly, giant red-haired mummies of large stature come from the southwestern United States. Moreover, a number of Native American traditions tell of red-haired giants. The most notable are the fierce Si-Te-Cah of Paiute legend. Remains of these giants lie in Lovelock Cave, near Lovelock, Nevada.

Hampshire County Giant

Moving on to the South Branch of the Potomac River in Hampshire County, this area has a long history of giant discoveries dating back to frontier times. Most are unsubstantiated, but a documented find occurred in 1889, when a Baltimore Sun correspondent contacted the Smithsonian after flooding had unearthed skeletal remains along the river. The Smithsonian sent Warren K. Moorehead out to investigate the area and he discovered many artifacts and eleven skeletons including that of a giant along the river near Hanging Rocks.2

The Mounds & Ancient Giants

The stories of West Virginia’s ancient giants really take shape and come to life in the mounds scattered about the state. There was over four hundred mounds in West Virginia that we know of. The Adena culture constructed most of the mounds in West Virginia. Waterways such as the Kanawha, Ohio, and Potomac rivers hold the highest concentration of mounds.

According to mainstream historians, the Adena culture existed from 1,000 BCE until 200 BCE and occupied land in Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Kentucky, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Various Eastern Woodlands tribes linked by funerary customs and their use of burial mounds comprised the Adena culture.

What mainstream historians fail to mention is that the Adena were known for large-statured individuals. These giants occupied the upper echelon of ancient American society—chiefs, shamans and warriors. Many of these people stood at eight feet in height—maybe more. Naturally, giant bones come from various Adena mound sites.

Kanawha River Valley Mounds

The highest concentration of mounds in West Virginia is in the Kanawha River Valley. The Bureau of Ethnology conducted extensive mound explorations here during the late-1800s. The Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, discusses incredible finds from the Smith Farm in Charleston.

Agents from the Smithsonian excavated a mound on the farm. They unearthed an “adult of extraordinary size.” When they reached the center of the mound, they uncovered a vault. Inside the vault was a chief measuring seven and a half feet. The chief had four skeletal "guards" at the corners of the vault.

The Fifth Annual Report also mentions another mound near the Smith farm that contained a seven-foot skeleton.

As a follow-up to the Smith Farm finds, Robert Douglas Roller penned a letter to W.S. Laidley recounting an incident in which a man who was plowing by the mound fifteen years after the excavation found a finely-crafted stone axe that weighed seven pounds and eight ounces. He thought maybe this axe belonged to the giant found in the mound earlier, and hoped that Mr. Laidley would send correspondents to investigate.3

Both the fifth and twelfth annual reports of the Bureau of Ethnology make mention of the mound in Institute at the Shawnee Regional Park. The reports call this Mound 31. There were two "large skeletons" in the mound in a sitting potion with their knees interlocked.

According to the Twelfth Annual Report,  excavators found a seven-foot skeleton in an enclosure in Spring Hill. A mound in Dunbar yielded a “rather large skeleton.” At a deeper level in the mound, there was a skeleton measuring seven and a half feet in length. The report mentions many large skeletons in rock mounds in Mason County, a “large skeleton” in the McCulloch Mound, and again, a “very large skeleton” in Barboursville. 

Elaborate Burials

It seems to me that we’re not just talking about a few tall people that lived in the Kanawha Valley in ancient times. This goes beyond a mere statistical anomaly and points to a class of very large-statured individuals—an elite hierarchy or royal bloodline as indicated by their elaborate burials.

And speaking of elaborate burials, perhaps the best example of this in West Virginia is the Criel Mound in South Charleston. Standing at thirty-three feet in height with a diameter of over one hundred seventy feet, the Criel Mound is the second largest mound in the state. The Smithsonian excavated the mound in 1883 and uncovered a seven-foot skeleton in a vault with ten skeletons arranged around it in a radial pattern. 

Moundsville

Many giant bones come from the mounds in West Virginia’s northern panhandle. It is here that the Grave Creek Mound, West Virginia’s largest mound, is located in the aptly-named town of Moundsville. The Grave Creek Mound is sixty-two feet in height and two hundred forty feet in diameter; it towers over the surrounding houses. Standing on top of the mound during a visit, I couldn’t help but wonder what ancient people thought when they saw it looming in the distance on the banks of the Ohio River.

Excavators unearthed a giant bones when they opened the mound in the 1800s: 

Archaeologists investigating the mound some years ago dug out a skeleton said to be that of a female because of the formation of the bones. The skeleton was seven feet four inches tall and the jawbone would easily fit over the face of a man weighing 160 pounds. That the women of that ancient day were not unlike the women of today in their liking for finery was evidenced by the articles that were found beside the skeleton of what centuries ago was a “flapper.” Seventeen hundred ivory beads, 500 seashells of an involute species and five copper bracelets were found in the vault. The beads and shells were about the neck and breast of the skeleton while the bracelets were about the arms.

Charleston Daily Mail, October 22, 1922.

Strange Tablets

In addition to giant bones, a strange tablet bearing hieroglyphic inscriptions was inside the Grave Creek Mound. Nicknamed the Grave Creek Stone, it is one of the most hotly debated artifacts from West Virginia. Some think the characters on the stone represent an ancient alphabet, while (of course!) mainstream archaeologists believe the stone is a fraud.

About ninety miles from the Grave Creek Mound, by the way the crow flies, another stone with strange engraved characters was found in 1931. The stone is known as the Wilson Stone or the Braxton County Rune Stone. Its inscriptions are very similar to those on the Grave Creek Stone.

Strange tablets with hieroglyphic characters inscribed on them come from mounds that also held the remains of giants. You have to wonder: Was an ancient form of writing in place among these mound building people?

More Discoveries

In 1930, Salem College professor Ernest Sutton excavated two mounds in Doddridge County. He uncovered four skeletons during his excavation. The smallest was seven feet long; the largest was nine feet. The best specimen measured seven and a half feet in length.4 

Someone allegedly found a thigh bone measuring thirty-six inches in length in Doddridge County in the 1800s.

Geologists from the University of Pennsylvania opened a mound in Pleasants County in 1930 and found an eight-foot skeleton and copper and bronze coins with “undecipherable inscriptions.”5 This makes you wonder if maybe a monetary system of sorts was in place in Ancient America. We know that the Adena culture had a vast trade network as copper from the Great Lakes, mica from North Carolina, sea shells from the Gulf of Mexico and other commodities from far outside their lands have been found in their mounds. Did they exchange currency as well?

Ten Footers

It seems that ancient America, in addition to its being a land of giants—that may have even used money!—might have been more technologically advanced than we’ve been led to believe. In the following report we have a ten-foot steel bow that was found in West Virginia in 1820:

In Virginia, near the Ohio River, there was found, in 1820, a steel bow, ten feet in length. When discovered, it was lying upon the surface of the earth. It was partially oxidized, but retained sufficient flexibility to enable the finder to determine its original use. He, being a blacksmith, converted it into horse-nails.

Judge Hosmer, Origin of Our Antiquities, Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine, vol. 9, no. 6, December 1872.

Let that sink in! A ten-foot steel bow—think of the implications if this report is true. On a side note, I sure wish the blacksmith didn’t melt down the bow! But it doesn’t matter. Even if such an impressive artifact were staring a skeptic in the face, he or she would find a way to dismiss it.

In this report from Wheeling, there is a fellow large enough to wield a ten-foot bow:

A day or two since, some workmen engaged in subsoiling the grounds of Sheriff Wickhan, at his vineyard in East Wheeling, came across a human skeleton. Although much decayed, there was little difficulty in identifying it, by placing the bones, which could not have belonged to others than a human body, in their original position. The impression made by the skeleton in the earth, and the skeleton itself, were measured by the Sheriff and a brother in the craft locale, both of whom were prepared to swear that it was ten feet nine inches in length. Its jaws and teeth were almost as large as those of a horse. The bones are to be seen at the Sheriff’s office.

“Skeleton of a Giant Found,” The New York Times, November 21, 1856.

Even Bigger

To close out this discussion of giant bones in the Mountain State, I will mention a couple of exceedingly large finds. The first is from Preston County where road workers discovered an enormous skull the late-1800s. The skull measured an enormous forty inches in circumference!6 

In Barbour County, flooding in 1933 exposed giant bones along a riverbank. Teamster Harry Berry dug them out. He found a skeleton in an excellent state of preservation. It was a whopping fourteen feet long; a tomahawk and pipe lay beside it.7

I only scratched the surface of giant bones in West Virginia in this article. Hopefully, I was able to shed a little light on some of the discoveries. One thing is certain: ancient West Virginia was indeed a land of giants.

Read more about the ancient giants in my book Giants: Men of Renown, published by Adventures Unlimited Press.

Notes

1. “Hu Maxwell’s Journeys.” Raleigh Herald (Beckley, WV), October 4, 1906.

2. “Indian Relics in West Virginia,” The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), January 23, 1889.

3. West Virginia Historical Magazine Quarterly, vol. 2, 1902.

4. “Salem Professor Discovers Huge Skeletons in Mounds.” Charleston Gazette, June 15, 1930.

5. The Ogden Standard-Examiner, November 9, 1930.

6. The Educational Weekly, vol. 1, no. 11, November 24, 1883. 

7. Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, April 5, 1933.

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