Hamilton, Ohio: Hollow Earth Monument

Local resident John Symmes thought that the earth was hollow, and he convinced a lot of other people that it was hollow, too. The monument resembles a big pitted olive on a pedestal.

The Hollow Earth Monument is in the middle of the playground, surrounded by a tall fence.

Capt. John Symmes, hero of the War of 1812, later became convinced that the Earth was hollow. After he died in 1829 his son erected a monument to him, topped by a globe with hole through its middle.

In 1991 the town of Hamilton took the globe and what remained of the inscriptions and glued them to what appears to be a recreated monument. It's locked in a steel cage because it's in a poor neighborhood, but vandals have defaced it anyway. Ludlow Park, where the monument stands, used to be Hamilton's cemetery, and the Symmes monument marked his grave. Most of the corpses were moved to a new cemetery in 1848, but Symmes is still here, according to the town. One of Symmes followers, Cyrus Teed, modified the Hollow Earth theory to an Inside-Out Earth theory, and has an entire state park dedicated to him in Estero, Florida.

We honor our crackpots!