The Harroun Site was situated on the south floodplain of Cypress Creek
on the outside of a large bend (Fig. 1). The only occupational features
visible on the surface were four small mounds, round to slightly oval in
shape, with rounded tops. They were designated Mounds A, B, C, and D. A
long, narrow lake, evidently surviving from an old cut-off channel of
Cypress Creek, lay beside the creek channel in the northwestern part of
the site.
Mound A, located 75 feet south of the creek and 350 feet east of the
lake, was by far the smallest of the four mounds. It measured about 30
feet in diameter and rose to a maximum height of approximately two feet
above the surface of the floodplain. Mound B stood at the south end of
the lake, Mound C was on the west bank of the lake, and Mound D was
situated in a precarious position on the brink of the floodplain at the
creek channel, 150 feet downstream from Mound A. A shallow depression
beside Mound C and two small depressions by Mound B marked possible
borrow areas. Mounds B, C, and D were all approximately the same size,
about 50 feet in diameter and 2.5 to 3.5 feet high.
The floodplain of Cypress Creek in the vicinity of the Harroun Site was
overgrown with an almost impenetrable tangle of underbrush and second
growth timber. Old-timers, however, reported that many years ago, before
the virgin timber was cut, the stream valleys in this region supported a
tall growth of timber with virtually no underbrush.