A proposal to turn a prehistoric American Indian site in central Georgia into the state’s first national park advanced out of a U.S. Senate committee Tuesday.
But the bipartisan group of Georgia lawmakers behind the measure creating Ocmulgee Mounds Park and Preserve is running short on time to get it across the finish line in Congress’ lame-duck session.
The bill’s sponsors celebrated the incremental step of advancing it out of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on Tuesday.
“This is historic and unprecedented progress toward establishing Georgia’s first National Park, but more work remains ahead,” Georgia U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat who is the lead sponsor in the Senate, said in a statement.
The proposal would establish the boundaries of the park and preserve for Ocmulgee Mounds and the surrounding area near Macon, where support has long been building for the project. Efforts to preserve Ocmulgee started nearly a century ago.
The site was occupied by many different American Indian cultures for thousands of years. The mounds were built around 900 A.D., and artifacts found in the area date back as far as 8,000 or 10,000 BC.
But in the 1830s, the Muscogee people were one of five tribes forcibly removed from their land during the Trail of Tears to what is now Oklahoma.
A House version of the park proposal also received a hearing Tuesday, another sign of late momentum. Congressman Austin Scott, a Tifton Republican and lead sponsor in the House, tried to address concerns that often accompany a proposed expansion of public lands.
“The language prioritizes public hunting and fishing access while protecting the state’s rights and regulation and private property rights in middle Georgia,” Scott said.
The South Georgia congressman also touted the potential benefits of the proposal. He argued the park would bolster national security by helping to protect the encroachment zone near Robins Air Force Base.
And he said it would be a relatively small addition to the nation’s public lands – and involve only willing sellers – yet would have a significant impact on central Georgia’s economy.
“Georgia is composed of roughly 38 million acres. Only about 5% of Georgia land is in the federal registry, so it is a very small expansion of property in the state of Georgia, in a state where we don’t have much federal land,” Scott said.
Macon-Bibb County Mayor Pro Tempore Seth Clark traveled to Washington to testify at Tuesday’s hearing. Clark said the U.S. Department of Defense has become “one of our strongest partners in this project.”
“There is no viability of middle Georgia’s economy without a robust mission-ready base in middle Georgia,” Clark said during brief remarks Tuesday.
Georgia is home to other National Park Service sites, such as the national military park in Chickamauga, but Ocmulgee – already a national historical park – would be the state’s first national park.
