Emeryville Shellmound for kids
The Giant Hill Made of Shells. A true story near Oakland, CA, told for kids 6-8.
Read along
Look out the window. Do you see a hill? Long, long ago, right near here, there was a big hill. And it was made of shells! The Ohlone people lived by the Bay for a very long time. They gathered shellfish to eat, and they saved the shells.
Shell after shell after shell. Over many, many years, the pile grew into a hill. People say it was more than sixty feet high. That is taller than five giraffes standing on each other's heads! Imagine the giraffes wobbling. The hill was not just a pile.
It was a very special place, a sacred place, where the Ohlone honored their families who came before them. It was the biggest shellmound of all the ones around the Bay! Can you spot something shaped like a little hill? Count how many you see!
Quiz the back seat
What was the big hill made of?
Show the answer
Shells. Shells! It was the biggest shellmound of all the ones around the whole San Francisco Bay.
3 fun facts
- The Emeryville Shellmound was a sacred burial site of the Ohlone people.
- It was reported to be over 60 feet high.
- It was the largest of over 425 shellmounds around San Francisco Bay.
For grown-ups
Written with AI from public sources, then checked claim by claim against the sources below before it was published; stories that don't pass stay off the app and this site. Narration is pre-recorded, and nothing you do on this page is tied to your kids.
Sources
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emeryville_Shellmound
- sacred-sites.org/emeryville-shellmound
- shellmound.org/learn-more
- emeryville.org/Government/About-Emeryville/History/Indigenous-People/Shellmound-Introduction/Public-Information-Report/Archaeological-History
- kqed.org/news/11704679/there-were-once-more-than-425-shellmounds-in-the-bay-area-where-did-they-go
- nativehistoryproject.org/articles/bay-area-shellmound-map
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Town and county names: GeoNames (CC BY 4.0).