See Macon’s Ocmulgee Mounds in a unique way: by lantern light

The annual Cherry Blossom Festival tradition of the Ocmulgee Lantern Tours returns this year as the National Historical Park still tries to become a national park after rapid progress in 2024.

The lantern tours offer a unique view of the park at night, something not normally offered as the Ocmulgee Mounds close daily at 5 p.m. throughout the year. The park is set to offer tours Friday and Saturday for two weekends of the festival, March 21-22 and March 28-29. 

Tours begin at 7:30 p.m. and run every 10 minutes until 9 p.m., according to the Ocmulgee Mounds Association. Reservations are encouraged and may be made at https://www.ocmulgeemounds.org/lantern-light-tours. General admission is $8.

Lanterns are provided to guests as they begin at the visitor’s center and walk a path to the Great Temple Mound, one of Ocmulgee’s most famed features. Atop the 55-foot mound, guests can see Macon’s downtown skylight lit up at night. 

Past iterations of the tours also featured park employees and volunteers showcasing artifacts and educating visitors on the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and its people who inhabited the area and built the mounds more than 12,000 years ago in the Mississippian Period.

The lantern tours garnered recognition from National Geographic and Travel and Leisure, among other publications, amid the Ocmulgee Mounds’ rapidly advancing bid to become a national park last year.

That mission for the Mounds could be in danger after about 1,000 employees of the National Parks Service and its affiliated parks were fired this year, putting the parks and their amenities in limbo, according to the Associated Press, Axios and others.

But the initiative to expand the Ocmulgee Mounds and make it a full national park was gaining steam as recently as November, when a Senate version of the bill to change the park’s status and create a federal preserve passed out of the energy and natural resources committee.

The advancement of the legislation made the bill eligible to be heard on the senate floor, though that has not happened yet due to a laundry list of other items the Senate tackled as the year ended in addition to an administration change.

Nonetheless, a hearing in November saw U.S. Reps. Austin Scott, R-Tifton, and Sanford Bishop, D-Columbus, — along with Ocmulgee Mounds National Park and Preserve executive director and Macon-Bibb County Commissioner Seth Clark — address a Senate subcommittee about the case for the Mounds to be a national park.

“We have done our part, invested our private resources and are prepared to continue to do so,” Clark told the subcommittee in late November. “We are ready.”

Though the project hit a snag because of circumstances beyond the park and its supporters’ control, the lantern tours and the recognition accumulated through the park’s growing profile still looms large. 

A once-a-year opportunity for a distinct and memorable experience at a blossoming national landmark offers an appealing opportunity and highlights the selling points presented by supporters like Bishop and Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Georgia, back in November. Tourism was a high-ranking benefit of promoting and potentially expanding the Ocmulgee Mounds to a national park, they said.

The opportunity to visit and learn about the Mounds at dusk, taking in elevated views from the Great Temple Mound and seeing light emit from the Earth Lodge’s interior, may draw new visitors — and even remind old ones how important Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park is for Macon.