was authorized on yesterday’s date (June 14) in 1934. The Monument is located near Macon, Georgia. The National Park Service informs us:
Ocmulgee is a memorial to the antiquity of man in this corner of the North American continent. The National Monument preserves a continuous record of human life in the Southeast from the earliest times to the present. From Ice-Age hunters to the Muscogee (Creek) people of historic times, there is evidence here of 12,000 years of human habitation.
One period stands out. Between AD 900 and 1200 a skillful farming people lived on this site. Known to us as Mississippians, they were part of a distinctive culture which crystallized about AD 750 in the middle Mississippi Valley and over the next seven centuries spread along riverways throughout much ofthe central and eastern United States. The Mississippians brought a more complex way of life to the region and here they left behind eight earthen mounds and the remains of a ceremonial earthlodge.