All 150 coins have been claimed for 2026. The caches are still in place but the 2026 challenge has ended. Thank you for coming out and enjoying LBL Heritage.
This Geocache is part of an annual Geocache Challenge put on by the Heritage Program at Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area as part of our outreach to the public, to get people to explore their forest and their history, and to share the unique heritage of the families from Between the Rivers.
This Geocache is part of the “2026 Land Between the Lakes Heritage Geocache Challenge: Mississippian Indians”. There are 6 geocaches placed across Land Between the Lakes related to the history of the Mississippian Indians (A.D. 1000 – 1500) along the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. If you locate each geocache, and collect a numbered aluminum tree tag from each cache, you can turn them in at the Golden Pond Visitor Center for one of 150 Challenge Coins created for this event.
The Geocache is a 6” x 6” orange watertight plastic box marked “Heritage Geocache” on the top. The geocache is placed among some rocks.
Canton Village Geocache
The Canton Site was a Mississippian-era (AD 1000-1500) village with at least nine circular and rectangular earthen mounds situated on the east bank of the Cumberland River. The site was first mapped in 1823 by Constantine Rafinesque.
1823 Map of the Canton Site Mound Locations
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque was born in 1783 near Constantinople and educated in France. After immigrating to the United States, he became a professor of botany at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, from 1819 to 1825.
Known by John James Audubon as an “eccentric naturalist”, Rafinesque traveled across Kentucky documenting and mapping prehistoric Native American mound sites.
On June 23, 1823, the year the tiny blufftop hamlet of Boyd’s Landing was renamed “Canton,” Rafinesque traveled from Lexington to map and describe the remains of the ancient American Indian town located there.
Around A.D. 1150, centuries before Europeans founded Boyd’s Landing, Native peoples had founded their own town on this very spot, and had lived there for 150 years.
Historic Red Brick Inn. The old Canton hotel was built by Abraham Boyd between 1798 and 1804. Rafinesque may have stayed here during his 1823 archaeological investigations.
Rafinesque’s map shows a site covering about 35 acres. It includes at least nine circular and rectangular flat-topped platform mounds enclosed by an earthen wall. Today, only Mound 1 and Mound 5 are clearly visible. Mound 1 is a large rectangular platform mound located about 260 feet east of the edge of the Cumberland River (Lake Barkley) bluffs. At one time, it stood about 30 feet high. Mound 5, located west and slightly north of Mound 1, overlooks the lake from a bluff spur. Mapped as two circular/elliptical platforms in 1823, today it is a small conical mound.
Excavations at the Canton Village
In 2007, after the old Canton Baptist Church was demolished, the Kentucky Archaeological Survey spent four weeks excavating at the site. They discovered a Mississippian house which had stone tools and pottery inside.
Excavation of Mississippian house with stone notched arrowhead and decorated pottery. Photos located on roadside sign at pull-off.
In preparation for the building of the new bridge over Lake Barkley, archaeologists returned to Canton in 2015 and excavated portions of the site that would have been impacted by the project.
Read more about Canton Site and excavations in the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s Heritage Spotlight #6. https://transportation.ky.gov/Archaeology/Documents/SPOTLIGHT%206%20with%203d.pdf