North Florida Indian Mounds

Carole and I love to visit sites that relate to American history. We always have a blast learning about America's past. We especially enjoy archaeological sites and parks.

Northern Florida has a number of Native American mound complexes. Many of these were obliterated over the years by European farmers and developers who used the mounds as fill material to use in construction or drainage projects. There is quite actually no telling what kind of history and artifacts we lost when mounds were removed to make room for fields or foundations.

Two mound complexes that are still at least partially present are the ones in the Letchworth-Love Mounds Archaeological State Park and the Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park. We decided to see both of those in the same day because they're in the same general region.

First we headed over to the Letchworth complex. It contains the highest temple mound in Florida, topping out at almost fifty feet tall. When you consider that these structures were built using only hoes and the earth transported in baskets, it must have taken a great deal of time to bring them up. We arrived to find that we had this isolated rural park all to ourselves. The entire time we were there we saw no one else. There are some information kiosks there explaining the history of the people who made the mounds and filling in details about what we know of their culture.

You can't actually climb to the top of the Letchworth temple mound, but there is a fine boardwalk and viewing platform at the base that offers a good look.

From there, we headed over to Tallahassee to find the Lake Jackson Mound Complex. Thank goodness for GPS. In no time we located the park. Again, we arrived to find it empty of visitors. There was one guy working who we assumed was the groundskeeper. And that he was, working busily to clear brush. But he was also obviously the park ranger who filled me in on the history of the Lake Jackson site. At one time there were many more mounds there, but most of them were destroyed by farmers and builders who wanted the earth to use in fields and foundations. You have to wonder what they destroyed in uprooting the work of the people who were there before them.

A few days later we would be visiting the Ocmulgee Mound Complex in Georgia which dwarfs both of these sites, but I still recommend that you see these two complexes if you are at all interested in American history and specifically Native American history and culture.

Me for scale. The tallest Native American temple mound in Florida.

Representation of the mound under construction.

The walkways leading to the temple mound at Letchworth.

The lesser temple mound at the Lake Jackson complex.

It looks like you could just walk across the field to the larger mound. However, flooding had caused a creek in the middle of the field to overflow. I had to find a narrow place to pick my way across.

Once I found a way across, I climbed the stairs to the top.

Video tour of the mounds. Carole and I do enjoy our vacations together.

Ocmulgee National Monument

We had decided to cruise up through Georgia on the way home to see a few places from my youth where I had not been for decades. These were places that I just wanted to view once more, and which Carole wanted to see for the first time.

When I was a kid I lived in Macon, Georgia for--I think--three years. One of the few nice things that I recalled about Macon was the Ocmulgee National Monument located just across the Ocmulgee River from downtown Macon. I was both pleased and surprised that the skyline of my one-time town had not changed one iota since I was a kid. It's rare to see a town the size of Macon not raise a single large building over the course of four decades.

I think I visited the Ocmulgee mound complex about five times or so during the three years we lived there. As I recalled from my childhood, it is indeed an impressive display of Native American culture and engineering. The large temple mound there is impressive by any standards of earthen mound construction by the people who lived here first. That mound, and several others in the monument, are vast. The society that built it was obviously complex and cohesive to have been able to undertake a public works project such as the one that left us with these amazing structures.

We had the good fortune to arrive at Ocmulgee during an outdoor class session for one of the local public schools. It was being taught by a Native American couple. I didn't get there in time to hear from which tribe they hailed, but their teaching process and personalities were sharp. They explained the long history of the native peoples of the Americas and showed the steady development of stone-age technology among the nations that were here before the Europeans.

Like the Wright Brothers Memorial at the Outer Banks, this is one of the National Monuments that Americans should visit. It impressed me at the same level as that one at Kill Devil Hill and is both inspirational and educational.

The museum and visitor's center building. I really dig this style of architecture.

The Earth Lodge. One has to duckwalk to enter it. The doorway is (maybe) three feet high. This lodge is over 1,000 years old.

Hallway to the meeting room in the Earth Lodge.

Interior shot. The raised platform is where three speakers/moderators/chiefs would have sat. Other seats radiated out from the central platform which seemed to me something like the bema.

The interior of the Earth Lodge.

After a half-mile hike, Carole and I approach the main temple mound.

The view from atop the main temple mound. You could play a football game up there. That's the skyline of downtown Macon across the river in the distance. There were likely various lodges constructed on the flat plateau of the mound.

To give you a good scale of the main temple mound, this is part of the staircase leading to the top. Carole is about halfway down, descending.