Archeologists haven’t confirmed the existence of the effigy mound in Lakeview, but there is some archival evidence of its location.

The map that inspired Judy’s question was drawn in 1900 by Albert Scharf, a surveyor and cartographer who took an interest in Chicago’s early geography. His map reconstructed a landscape that had been vastly transformed from an area with a few villages and trails to a major city with several outlying suburbs and roads. Scharf relied on accounts from Chicagoans old enough to remember the area before 1833.

His source for the location of the lizard effigy mound was likely an artist and amateur archaeologist named Carl Dilg, who was obsessed with Chicago’s archaeological history and on a personal quest to document the archaic sites of Chicago. As he wrote in a private letter, Dilg wanted to make sure Chicago’s history was not “smothered and killed.”

The Chicago History Museum has a large collection of Dilg’s papers, including notes he made from dozens of excursions to archaeological sites around Chicago in the 1880s and 1890s. They contain multiple references to a mound in Lakeview, which he referred to as a “lizard” or as a “serpent.” Dilg made several sketches of artifacts found near the mound as well as a map of the area now known as Lakeview, showing the exact location of the mound, which you can see in his map.

Dilg’s map shows a lizard-shaped mound on the block bounded by Oakdale Avenue, Sheffield Avenue, Wellington Avenue, and Mildred Avenue (formerly “May Street”), oriented from north to south, in the western third of the block. (Courtesy Chicago History Museum, Charles A. Dilg collection)

But Dilg didn’t include a precise description of the mound’s length, width, or makeup.

Still, there seems to be significant circumstantial evidence that he’d actually seen it. For one, his depiction of the mound shows the head facing south and tail facing north, as though the creature was walking south. This is consistent with other water spirit effigies that archaeologists have found in places like Wisconsin. Dilg’s sketches and notes also show the lizard-shaped mound had another round-shaped mound built adjacent or directly on the “lizard.” This is consistent with Potawatomi burial practice: The Potawatomi typically constructed conical burial mounds on the site of older effigy mounds. Finally, effigy mounds have been documented as close to Chicago as Aurora, so it’s possible effigy builders’ could have made it to Chicago.

In Dilg's sketch of the side profile of the lizard mound, he compares it to another archaeological site in California. (Courtesy Chicago History Museum, Charles A. Dilg collection)

But we know that there’s no lizard mound in Lakeview today, so if it did exist, then what happened to it?

About 15 years after Dilg made his sketches, Charles Brown, a distinguished archaeologist from Wisconsin, visited Chicago to review Dilg’s extensive work. Brown wrote about Dilg’s observations, including one sentence about the Lakeview effigy mound:

“A ‘lizard mound’ of doubtful origin was located on Oakdale Avenue and Wellington Street, under the present elevated station,” Brown wrote.

Brown’s notes suggest there was some kind of mound that was probably destroyed by the construction of the elevated train line that eventually became the Chicago Transit Authority’s Brown Line. His use of the phrase “of doubtful origin” suggests Brown, a leading expert on effigy mounds at the time, doubted the mound in Lakeview was a true effigy mound like those 800- to 1,200-year-old mounds in Wisconsin.

Dilg describes the Lakeview lizard mound has having another “rounded” mound situated on top of it. Potawatomi Indians (who lived in Chicago) are known to have constructed round-shaped burial mounds on the same site as older animal-shaped effigy mounds. (Courtesy Chicago History Museum, Charles A. Dilg collection)

But archaeologist Amy Rosebrough says Brown has “been known to be wrong.” Brown’s doubt may simply reflect his own disdain at Dilg’s amateur approach to archaeology or his belief that Chicago was not part of the effigy mound builders’ territory, Rosebrough says.

Without a more complete record, Rosebrough and other archaeologists are not able to verify if Lakeview’s mound was an authentic effigy mound or merely a lump of earth that Dilg’s romantic imagination transformed into an ancient sculpture.