The Wilford Site

The Wilford Site. Kathio Landmark Trail. , An Ancient Village , University of Minnesota archaeologist Lloyd Wilford discovered and tested this site in 1933. Larger excavations were conducted here in the 1970s, and the site was named in Professor Wilford's honor., If you look to your left as you read this sign, you can see the Cooper site, on the peninsula to the southwest. Both the Cooper and Wilford sites revealed the remains of ancient villages, with both summer and winter houses. Artifacts and features excavated here are similar to those of the Cooper site. These were neighboring villages at the time French explorers Duluth and Hennepin visited Kathio., The village that was here in the 1600s was smaller than the one at the Cooper site. Here there were three summer houses and two winter houses. The population of this village is estimated to have been 25 to 40 people., Site Excavation , University of Minnesota archaeologists excavated the Wilford site in the summers of 1974, 75 and 76. They discovered artifacts, fire pits and house floors from a village of the time when European explorers first visited the area., A Centuries-Old Tradition , Archaeologists also discovered evidence of later use of the Wilford site. Dozens of shallow depressions revealed that the site had been used as a wild rice processing area, later in the historic period. Ojibwe families harvested wild rice from Ogechie Lake from the 1700s until about 1970, when the lake stopped producing harvestable quantities.