By Brandon Larrabee
Morris News Service
CARTERSVILLE - You could call it Kenneth Akins' dream job.
He was a child when he first came to the Etowah Indian Mounds in northeast Georgia, a state historic site that features one mound 67 feet high, two smaller bumps in the ground and several other rises that indicate where other mounds were.
"I was excited when I came here as a kid," recalled Akins, now the manager of the site. "Turned me on to this place, turned me on to history."
He knew what he wanted to do with his life.
"I was so fascinated with this place, and I told my dad, 'I want to work here.'"
Akins studied history in college and got a job with the state park system in 1981. For 23 years, he moved from site to site. He was working at Ft. King George in Darien, helping that park survive the threat of closing, when Akins finally got the position he had always wanted.
Now, four years into a drive to spruce up the site and give visitors more of a sense of how the Muscogee Creek who roamed the area 500 years ago lived, Akins is cutting back. Savings in water use are helping Etowah weather budget cuts. Grass is being cut less often.
And there is the returning prospect that the state's deepening fiscal crisis could force the Department of Natural Resources to close as many as six state parks and seven historic sites. That would be the latest blow, advocates say, in a six-year long financial struggle for sites such as Etowah.
"It comes after state park budgets have been cut every year since 2002," said Andy Fleming, executive director of Friends of Georgia State Parks and Historic Sites. "We feel that, right now, the parks could really suffer if we have any additional cuts."
DNR argues that, while it would hate to make the cuts, it has little choice. Nearly $25.1 million of its $115.8 million budget is wrapped up in parks, and Gov. Sonny Perdue has asked each agency for plans to slice spending by as much as 10 percent to deal with a shortfall that could surpass $2 billion.
On the mounds
Akins' work includes trying to raise awareness of what the mounds are and aren't, educating the public about life in the 54-acre city that was home to the Muscogee Creek from around 1000 A.D. until shortly after Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto's visit in 1540.
For example: only one of the mounds, known as Mound C, was used for burial. Mound A, the site's tallest and one of the highest in the Southeast, was where the chief of the area would live. When each chief died, his house would be burned, and the new chief would want the mound raised a bit to show that he had a higher status that his predecessor.
The shorter Mound B was likely for an assistant to the chief, and the other mounds - long since eroded - probably served as the homes of other prominent people in the city's life, though none as prominent as those who lived on the higher mounds.
Akins has moved to increase the educational thrust of the park since getting there in 2004.
He worked to establish the Friends of Etowah Indian Mounds, which holds fundraisers and other events at the park. He increased signage, solicited donations to build a house resembling those the Muscogee would have lived in and recommended projects to the friends like a small nursery of grasses and wildflowers native to the area. The hope is to get rid of the non-native, common grass now in the area so that in a decade or so, visitors will have a truer picture of what Etowah looked like centuries ago.
Finding the funds
According to DNR, about 29,091 people attended Etowah in fiscal year 2007. That would make the park one of the least visited in the system, even as DNR says visitation will be one of several factors used to decide which parks to close.
Other components of figuring out which places to shutter could cut in Etowah's favor - including its cultural and historic significance.
"I don't feel that there's any reason that they'll cut this park and close it," said Patty Wallenburg, president of Friends of Etowah Indian Mounds.
What that means for other lightly-visited locations, like the Robert Toombs House in Washington or Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation in Brunswick, is unclear.
The department stresses that no final decisions have been made, and Perdue or the General Assembly could decide to spare the parks by cutting elsewhere.
"We really have to wait to see the dollars that we have to find and then we can chart our course of action from there," department spokeswoman Beth Brown said in an e-mail. "And, it may be that once we have ?the list,' we can work with local communities to find alternative ways to keep those facilities operating closer to normal ... which may modify what ends up on the final list."
Some supporters have pressed the state to instead increase the relatively modest park fees. But Fleming pointed out that, while that idea has merit, there are also pitfalls.
"You say that, and then you have to remember that, especially in a down economy, the inexpensive or affordable outdoor recreation opportunities become even more important," he said.
Meanwhile, those like Akins, who discovered his love of history through a boy's eyes peering at the mounds of Etowah, wait to see what will happen to Georgia's publicly-owned spaces.
"I'm concerned, but I feel very positive," he said. "I think we're all concerned. Everybody's concerned. It would be a big blow to the state of Georgia."
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