Three men who were part of the Civilian Conservation Corps that worked on the site of the future Ocmulgee National Monument during the 1930s will be on hand for an open house and reception there Saturday.
The reception is part of the monument’s 75th anniversary celebration, which began earlier this year and continues this month. On Dec. 23, 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the document that created the national monument.
The open house and reception run from noon to 5 p.m., with a birthday cake cutting at 2 p.m.
An interpretive ranger will offer guided Earth Lodge tours throughout the afternoon.
The park will host people who helped create and support the park and their descendants, including CCC workers and their descendants as well as the offspring of A.R. Kelly, who supervised an archaeological dig there in the 1930s. The CCC and Works Progress Administration were part of New Deal initiatives that provided employment for workers in a wide range of jobs, and men from both programs were at the Ocmulgee site.
Interpretive ranger Angela Bates said CCC workers earned $4.50 a week while they worked at “the Indian mounds,” which the site was called colloquially. They did everything from building the visitors center to rebuilding the Earth Lodge and cataloguing artifacts. About 800 men worked at the site at one point, and they found an estimated 2 1/2 millions artifacts over time, Bates said.
Also, descendants of the three Macon men who lobbied intensely for the park’s creation -- Gen. Walter A. Harris, C.C. Harold, and Linton Solomon -- are scheduled to attend. Harris wrote a letter to the Smithsonian Institution recommending that they conduct a dig at the mounds, and that eventually initiated Kelly’s work.
