Sen. Warnock tours Ocmulgee Mounds, pushes for National Park status

Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock toured the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park in Macon on Monday, recognizing the importance of the park in the broader Ocmulgee River Corridor with an announcement of a bipartisan effort to make the park Georgia's first national park and preserve.

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock toured the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park in Macon on Monday, recognizing the importance of the park in the broader Ocmulgee River Corridor with an announcement of a bipartisan effort to make the park Georgia’s first national park and preserve.

“It is a living testament to our intertwined histories,” Warnock said.

The senator toured the museum and Ocmulgee Mounds as part of his visit.

The announcement comes on the heels of a study from the National Parks Service which contains concerns about the logistics of making the corridor a national park. The study cited the corridor’s large boundary–from Macon to Hawkinsville–as part of the challenge.

“We’ve already shortened up that boundary,” Tracie Revis with the Ocmulgee National Park and Preserve Initiative said Monday.

She and her team have been working with members of Congress, and she says the footprint has been made smaller to now extend only to Highway 96.

Warnock says no legislation has been introduced as of now, but the time is soon coming.