Plum Bayou Mounds Archeological State Park

Visitors and staff describe apparitions and unexplained sounds around the mounds at Plum Bayou Mounds Archeological State Park after dark. About twenty minutes southeast of Little Rock, the site preserves the largest and most complex prehistoric mound complex in Arkansas — a ceremonial and religious center built by the Plum Bayou culture between roughly 700 and 1050 AD, centuries before European contact. Its longtime name came from 19th-century settlers who mistakenly assumed the earthworks were built by the Toltec people of central Mexico; research since the 1970s traced the mounds to the local Plum Bayou culture, and the site was officially renamed in 2022, though many longtime visitors still call it Toltec Mounds. A National Historic Landmark since 1973, the park preserves 18 earthen mounds arranged around a central plaza.