Senate committee advances bill to establish Georgia’s first-ever National Park and Preserve

The U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources advanced a measure to establish Georgia’s first-ever National Park and Preserve in Middle Georgia.

The committee signed off on S.4216, the Ocmulgee Mounds National Park and Preserve Establishment Act. The bill to establish the Ocmulgee Mounds and surrounding areas in Middle Georgia as a National Park and Preserve now heads to the U.S. Senate for consideration.

“This is historic and unprecedented progress toward establishing Georgia’s first National Park, but more work remains ahead,” U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Georgia, said in a statement.

In May, Ossoff, U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Georgia, and U.S. Reps. Austin Scott, R-Georgia, and Sanford D. Bishop Jr., D-Georgia, introduced versions of the measure in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate. On Tuesday, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Federal Lands held a hearing on the House version of the measure.

“This hearing was further progress in making history by establishing Georgia’s first National Park and Preserve,” Scott said in a statement.

Middle Georgia leaders lauded the news.

“The impact of this bipartisan and bicameral bill to create Georgia’s first national park and preserve will allow our ancestral Muscogee descendants to help tell the story of our homelands,” Muscogee (Creek) Principal Chief David Hill said in a statement.

“We know the importance of these cultural lands and are excited to partner with Middle Georgians to help reconcile our lands and our stories,” Hill added. “I am always humbled to be back in the lands of our people and know that we are still here today carrying on our Muscogee ways.”