National Park Service doesn’t want the Ocmulgee Mounds to become national park. Here’s why
The plan to designate Macon’s Ocmulgee Mounds as the state’s first national park has hit another bump in the road: The National Park Service doesn’t want to make it a national park, according to testimony in the Senate Tuesday.
But the initiative is nowhere near dead, advocates say.
The National Park Service opposes the plan because its focus is on maintaining current national parks instead of taking on expansions, which would need more resources, according to Mike Caldwell, an associate director with the National Park Service. Officials in the hearing highlighted staffing challenges, noting that park and historic site employees have decreased by roughly a third while visitor numbers remain near record levels.
Tuesday’s hearing, held before the Senate National Park Subcommittee reviewed 25 bills. That included Senate Bill 1131, which would elevate Ocmulgee Mounds from a national historical park to a national park and preserve.
Several of the proposed bills under consideration would create or expand NPS sites or require new studies, including Ocmulgee Mounds, all of which would demand more resources. Caldwell said the NPS is focusing on addressing urgent needs within its existing portfolio.
“The National Park Service doesn’t create national parks. Congress does,” said Seth Clark, CEO of the Ocmulgee Mounds National Park and Preserve Initiative. “(Creating a national park) is a power that is vested in Congress, and there are, I don’t know, 15 members of Congress, in both parties and in both chambers that want to move this piece of legislation and it’s their prerogative to do that. So the that’s what we’re just really grateful that they support this and that they intend to move forward with it.”
The federal government manages about 640 million acres, and the Ocmulgee Mounds National Park and Preserve would expand that by about 7,000 acres, totalling only a 0.000011% addition to the federal state, according to Clark.
“There’s a lot of blood, sweat, love, passion and a lot of goodwill around this project,” Clark said. “Middle Georgians have worked on this for generations, and I would strongly suggest that that is not something that an opinion from a bureaucracy is going to change.”
This year’s push to make the mounds a national park is far less rushed than last year, when lawmakers had only a short window of a few months after the subcommittee hearing to advance the bill before the process reset. With an entire calendar year ahead, Congress now has an entire calendar year ahead, allowing plenty of time to “to be productive and answer the call of middle Georgians,” Clark said.
This story was originally published December 11, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
