Editing Marietta, Ohio (section)

===19th century===
[[File:Marietta Works Squier and Davis Plate XXVI.jpg|thumb|upright|1837 Survey of Marietta Earthworks]]

Townspeople organized and chartered [[Marietta College]] in 1835. It was used as a station on the [[Underground Railroad]] to help [[slaves]] escape from the South.<ref name="Yeager" /> [[Ohio University]] was founded earlier in [[Athens, Ohio|Athens]], on land reserved for public education under the Northwest Ordinance.

The settlers preserved the Great Mound, or ''Conus,'' by planning their own [[Mound Cemetery (Marietta, Ohio)|cemetery]] around it. They also preserved the two largest platform mounds, which they called ''Capitolinus'' and ''Quadrophenus.'' The former was developed as the site for the city library.<ref name="OHC" /> As of 1900, the [[Mound Cemetery (Marietta, Ohio)|Mound Cemetery]] had the highest number of burials of Revolutionary War officers in the nation, indicating the nature of the generation that settled Marietta.<ref>[[Daughters of the American Revolution]] (DAR): ''American Monthly'', Vol. 16, Jan–Jun 1900, New York: R. R. Bowker Co., 1900, p. 329</ref>

Marietta's location on two major navigable rivers made it ideal for [[Industry (manufacturing)|industry]] and [[commerce]]. [[Boat building]] was one of the early industries. Artisans built oceangoing vessels and sailed them downriver to the [[Mississippi River]] and south to New Orleans and the [[Gulf of Mexico]]. In less than two decades after settlement, the [[steamboat]] had been developed, and was also constructed here. Brick factories and [[sawmill]]s supplied materials for homes and public buildings. An iron mill, along with several foundries, provided rails for the growing [[railroad]] industry; the Marietta Chair Factory made [[furniture]].

Interest in the prehistoric culture that built the Marietta Earthworks continued. The complex was surveyed and drawn by [[E. G. Squier|Ephraim George Squier]] and [[Edwin Hamilton Davis]], whose large project on numerous prehistoric mounds throughout the Ohio and Mississippi valleys was published by the [[Smithsonian Institution]] in 1848 as ''[[Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley]].'' It was the first book published by the Smithsonian. Their drawing above shows the plan of the original complex, which "included a large square enclosure surrounding four flat-topped pyramidal mounds, another smaller square, and a circular enclosure with a large burial mound at its center."<ref name="OHC">[http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=2219 "Marietta Earthworks"], Ohio History Central, accessed August 20, 2012</ref> The walled, graded path, called by the settlers the ''[[Sacra Via]]'', led from the largest enclosure to the lower river's edge. This pathway was destroyed in 1843 during mid-nineteenth century development.<ref name="OHC" />