Cahokia Mounds museum reopens to the public after 4 years of repairs

After being closed for renovations for more than four years, the museum at the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site partially reopened to the public on Wednesday.

The gift shop, site model, canoe exhibit and a new temporary exhibit are all open and will be available from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays, according to a Facebook post by the organization. Remaining work to finish renovations to the gallery will be completed, and it will open to the public in late summer.

Cahokia Mounds, located about seven miles from downtown St. Louis in what’s now Collinsville, served as an epicenter of local Native American culture. At its peak, it’s believed that between 15,000 and 20,000 people lived in Cahokia around the years 1100 to 1200 CE and to be the largest indigenous archeological site north of Mexico. Throughout the lengthy repairs at the Metro East museum, the grounds remained open.

The site’s interpretive center shut down in March 2022 for what was expected to be renovations costing $5.5 million that would take 12 to 18 months to complete.

However, replacing the roof and updating the site’s mechanical and electrical systems cost roughly $12.8 million, which had ballooned because of delays and inflation, according to KMOV.

Multiple efforts in the last decade have been made by federal lawmakers to make Cahokia Mounds a national park but have not come to fruition.

U.S. Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin of Illinois introduced legislation last year that would fund a study required to make the mounds a national historical site. The bill currently sits in the Senate’s Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.