A prominent landmark once stood on the lakeshore southeast of here: the Enterprise midden, a refuse heap created by people occupying these spring lands thousands of years ago. Its mass of freshwater shells served certainly as a kitchen dump and possibly as a lookout, a ceremonial site, or for other uses. In the 1840s, Cornelius Taylor built a riverboat inn on the midden, and pioneering anthropologists began studying the shell mound. Harvard's Jeffries Wyman called it the most important native dwelling place on Lake Monroe and reported in 1860 that it stood 18 to 20 feet high. Later studies found shell deposits extending 1,200 feet along the lake and as far back as Braddock Road. Owners mined the midden until the 1920s for fertilizer and roads, leaving little above ground, but modern archaeological excavations, including Dr. Barbara Purdy's wet-site work in Lake Monroe, have uncovered ceramic, bone, and wood artifacts, and deposits along the shore have been radiocarbon dated to 6,000 years ago. Archaeologists remain interested in the midden and in the native people whose lives centered on gathering shellfish and the area's other natural gifts.