"A party of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey located in Livingston in June 1934 for the purpose of making surveys in Overton County. This project was under the direction of Maurice A. Hecht and composed a company of sixty-five men and a fleet of thirty-two trucks, with nineteen steel towers. A tower seventy-seven feet tall was erected on the South side of the Livingston Academy campus in Livingston (now A.H. Roberts Elementary School), and a sixty-four foot tower was erected on Pilot Knob near Monroe, and one on Tower Hill near Allons, in order to carry out the triangular survey."

I researched the internet to find out what I could about the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey and learned that it origins go back to President Thomas Jefferson. In 1807, he created the nation’s first physical science agency, and today, some two hundred years later, parts of this early organization are still operating. One of the oldest agencies in our system of government, this agency of the Federal government is one very few people have ever heard of other than those working within that branch of the government.

Additional information that had been passed on to James Hunter by the late Dewey Coffman has this to say about the mysterious stone tower, the remains of which are believed to still be near the top of the mountain. "A stone structure known locally as the stone tower stood on the summit of Tower Mountain three miles northeast of Livingston. This so called tower was found there by the first whites who visited the region. They believed it to be of Indian origin. It gave the name to the mountain. It was constructed of firm sandstone slage broken in good building shape and was nearly square with corners somewhat rounded. It was about eight feet square and eight feet high and was hollow. This tower was partially disassembled around 1870 and used in the constructing of chimneys in the homes of Reese Ogletree, James Burgess, and a Mr. Beard. Some local men dug beneath where the tower stood and found nothing of interest to them. It was said that while they were digging beneath the tower, they heard a doleful or sorrowful sound. There were a lot of grown up people that were afraid to go that way for a long time. This information furnished by J.L. Gunnels, age 60, and Paul Neal, age 70, who lived within sight of the tower when boys. This structure was probably an above ground rock burial chamber. A few somewhat similar structures are reported in Knox County, Tennessee, chimneys, ten or fifteen in number, like stone chimneys, open at the top, located just below the mouth of the French Broad River." The date this information was obtained by Dewey Coffman is unknown.

James suggested that the construction of the tower might possibly have taken place during the time of what is known as the Mississippian period, a time that preceded native Americans we are more familiar with. According to information on the internet, the Mississippian culture was a mound building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 A.D. to 1500 A.D. The Mississippian peoples were technologically comparable to the European Copper Age, and have been called Master Farmers. They grew and stored corn, beans, squash, pumpkins, sunflowers, and tobacco. They cultivated their agricultural fields with tools of wood, bone, and stone. The harvests were collected in baskets. Animals such as raccoon, turkey, rabbit, beaver, squirrel, turtles, and deer were hunted. Skins were tanned to make clothing and no part of the animal was wasted. Deer may have been hunted in several ways. A lone hunter could camouflage himself with the hide of a deer in order to approach the animals. Fires might have been set in the woods to drive the deer into open areas. The final kill was made with bows and arrows

Metals such as copper were cold hammered and worked into various forms of ornamental or ceremonial objects. Smelting was unknown. Clay, fired into pottery, was the only structurally altered raw material. Even so, Mississippian craftsmen achieved remarkable results in knapping, grinding, carving, and weaving natural materials, often expanding on designs and techniques pioneered by earlier cultures.

Women constructed pots by coiling and modeling local clays. These vessels were used for storing food and drink. This early Mississippian pottery was made in many sizes and shapes suited to a variety of everyday and ceremonial uses. Decoration was in the form of effigies (images or representations of people or animals).Designs were woven into baskets and fabric. Stone, wood, bone, shell and other materials were probably utilized, though unfortunately, organic material does not survive well in the moist, acidic soil of the Southeast. Based on evidence from other archaeological sites and upon historic accounts of the Indians, people decorated themselves with shell gorgets, beads, tattooing, paint, elaborate hairdos, feathers and many types of ear ornaments.

In Rhode Island, a 751 acre property known as the George B. Parker Woodland is owned and maintained by the Audubon Society. Open year round, this impeccable area of woodlands is also famous for its collection of more than 100 mysterious cairns (mounds of stones piled up as a memorial or to mark a boundary or path). These beehive-shaped stone piles range from two to four feet in height and are spread throughout a tract of land surrounding a trail through this property. Many theories surrounding the origins of the rock cairns have surfaced, including theories that they were built by the Narragansett Indians, Celtic settlers, or colonial farmers.