A Push to Move the Golf Course Atop a Native American ‘Stonehenge’

Historians hoping to preserve the ancient Octagon Earthworks in Newark, Ohio, as a UNESCO World Heritage site face a problem: the golf club that leases the property.

NEWARK, Ohio — The third hole here at the Moundbuilders Country Club is a tricky par 4: The green is protected by a six-foot-high mound that almost completely encircles the hole and requires a deft chip shot to clear if your approach shot goes awry. “It’s a blind shot,” said Randol Mitchell, the club’s head golf professional, after driving his ball a good chunk of the hole’s 435 yards. “You have to watch out for those mounds.” The topography of the course is built around the mounds, which were prescribed by the cosmology of the Native Americans who created them approximately 2,000 years ago as a way to measure the movement of the sun and the moon through the heavens.