Jonathan Creek Gold

•June 26, 2024•

by Janet Roney

In my last visit with you, I finally told you the location of the ancient sunken road at Nelson Ford on the Kaskaskia River. I also said that mastodons, mammoths, and bison may have made it. It is so worn down that it would have taken ages of erosion and trampling feet to create it.   

We know that mastodons once roamed Moultrie County for they found a skeleton of one west of Lake City, according to Ernie Winnings. A mammoth tooth was found in Welsh’s Gravel Pit and bison bones were all over the prairie when pioneers first arrived.  

If ancient animals and man used this old trail leading out of the center of the Old Bend towards the river on the south, there had to be a way to get into it from the north. However, steep bluffs lined the north side of Old Bend, and I knew of no roads coming down the bluffs.  

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