Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park (formerly Ocmulgee National Monument) in present-day Macon, Georgia, United States preserves traces of over ten millennia of culture from the Native Americans in the Southeastern Woodlands. Its chief remains are major earthworks built before 1000 CE by the South Appalachian Mississippian culture (a regional variation of the Mississippian culture.) These include the Great Temple and other ceremonial mounds, a burial mound, and defensive trenches. They represented highly skilled engineering techniques and soil knowledge, and the organization of many laborers. The site has evidence of "17,000 years of continuous human habitation."The 3,336-acre park is located on the east bank of the Ocmulgee River. Present-day Macon, Georgia developed around the site after the United States built Fort Benjamin Hawkins nearby in 1806 to support trading with Native Americans.
For thousands of years, succeeding cultures of prehistoricindigenous peoples had settled on what is called the Macon Plateau at the Fall Line, where the rolling hills of the Piedmont met the Atlantic coastal plain. The monument designation included the Lamar Mounds and Village Site, located downriver about three miles from Macon. The site was designated for federal protection by the National Park Service (NPS) in 1934, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966, and redesignated as an national historical park in 2019.
if you are driving through Georgia along the Interstate 75 corridor, this is worth the stop. Plan on spending the entire day here to include hiking the nice trails they have there.
Contact information:
Website: https://www.nps.gov/ocmu/index.htm
1207 Emery Hwy Macon, GA 31217
Phone: (678) 752-8257 x222
Visitor center
Earth Lodge
View from the Great Temple Mound.
