[Macon, GA, Apr 5, 2025]

Some time ago, I read this article about where the 64th national park might be. Ocmulgee Mounds in Macon, GA, was at the top of the list! Yet another place in Georgia I was just now hearing about! When I originally mapped out this trip, I decided against making it down to Macon. The drive from Helen was 3.5 hours, and then I’d have to drive another 2+ hours back up to Atlanta. But I kept thinking about it. I googled again to see if anything more recent regarding Ocmulgee’s candidacy had occurred. Indeed, a bill about Ocmulgee becoming a national park had just been reintroduced in Congress. I decided to suck up the drive and make it down to Macon.

I arrived 20 minutes before the start of a ranger-lead tour, which I decided to take advantage of since I knew next to nothing about Ocmulgee.

The park is a pre-historic Native American site. Many different tribes inhabited the area continuously starting at least 12,000 years ago. Native Americans first came here to hint Ice Age mammals. Around 900 CE, the Mississippian Period began, and people constructed mounds for their elite, which remain here today. When the Spaniards came through in the 16th century, they left a trail of destruction and disease that likely lead to the decline of the cultures that built the mounds. By the 1800s, the land was inhabited by the Muscogee, who considered the mounts sacred.

In 1690, Scottish fur traders from Carolina built a trading post on the Ocmulgee River near the mounds. Some Muscogee settled nearby, developing a village along the Ocmulgee River near the post, where they could easily acquire trade goods. The outline of the trading post remains.

The Earth Lodge,  a reconstructed council chamber of the Mississippian culture, was quite impressive. The walls and roof are reconstructions from the 1930s, but the clay floor is original. It dates from year 1015. The lodge remained buried in the fields until excavations began at Ocmulgee in the 1930s.

The Great Temple Mound Complex consists of the two tallest mounds in the park. The Great Temple Mound and the Lesser Temple Mound were created by the Mississippians in the 10th century CE. The flat-topped, pyramidal mounds were raised in layers at intervals over many years. The 55-ft tall Great Temple Mound is where the village chief would have lived. Today, there are steps that allow visitors to climb to the top of both mounds for a spectacular view of the surrounding area.

The Funeral Mound was nearby. It was, sadly, partially destroyed by the train that was built through the area in the 1800s. Both this mound and Lesser mound were impacted.

I wish I could spend more time in the park, but it was hot and there is no shade out there in the fields between the mounds. It was time for me to head back to Atlanta, where my conference would begin the next day. My hotel was in Midtown Atlanta, just on the edge of the GA Tech campus. I grabbed some delicious tacos nearby and spent the rest of the day doing laundry and resting. The next few days were guaranteed to be quite busy.