Stadiums Built Over Ancient Ruins and Historic Landmarks

13. Busch Stadium – St. Louis, USA

Busch Stadium, home to the St. Louis Cardinals, is a legendary baseball venue, but the land it occupies was once part of something far older than baseball itself—a prehistoric Native American city known as Cahokia. Cahokia was a thriving metropolis of mound-building Mississippian culture, home to tens of thousands of people between 600–1400 AD. At its peak, it was the largest city in North America, with a population rivaling that of London at the time. The area around present-day St. Louis was part of Cahokia’s satellite villages, where Native American communities lived, farmed, and traded. When modern St. Louis was built, many of Cahokia’s sacred mounds and village sites were destroyed, including those near the current location of Busch Stadium. Though no visible remains exist today, underground surveys suggest that buried relics, pottery, and tools may still lie beneath the city’s foundations. For many Native American tribes, this land remains spiritually significant, and some descendant communities still honor the ancient Cahokians' legacy. While fans flock to Busch Stadium to witness modern sports history, the echoes of an ancient civilization remain hidden just beneath the surface. Built Over: A Native American Settlement.