Serpent Mound crater, also known as the Serpent Mound Disturbance, is an eroded meteorite impact crater in Ohio, United States. It lies largely in Adams County, with the northern part mostly in Highland County, except for a small northeast part in Pike County.
It is classified as a complex crater because it features a central uplift, a transition zone, and a ring graben (a ring-shaped trough in the outer part of the crater). Although eroded, the original rim diameter is estimated at 8 km (5.0 mi) and the age is estimated to be less than 320 million years (Mississippian or younger).
The crater is named after the Serpent Mound, an effigy mound, located on a plateau in Brush Creek Valley within the crater.
Famous quotes containing the words crater, serpent and/or mound:
“Give me a condor’s quill! Give me Vesuvius’ crater for an inkstand!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“You danced with me never saying a word.
Instead the serpent spoke as you held me close.
The serpent, that mocker, woke up and pressed against me
like a great god and we bent together
like two lonely swans.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Worn down by the hoofs of millions of half-wild Texas cattle driven along it to the railheads in Kansas, the trail was a bare, brown, dusty strip hundreds of miles long, lined with the bleaching bones of longhorns and cow ponies. Here and there a broken-down chuck wagon or a small mound marking the grave of some cowhand buried by his partners “on the lone prairie” gave evidence to the hardships of the journey.”
—For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)