Lab 5 - Ocmulgee Nat'l Monument

     For this lab the class visited Ocmulgee National Monument. We spent some time in the visitor center, walked through some of the surrounding park, and visited the mounds that are monument's main feature. In the visitor center we learned that the main reason Native Americans first settled in the area was because of Macon's location on the Fall Line. The Fall Line is a geographical feature that separates two different landscapes in the Eastern U.S.: the Piedmont and the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The Piedmont is characterized by rolling hills that begin the transition into the Appalachian Mts, which differs noticeably from the flat, lower land of the Coastal Plain. Living along the Fall Line meant that Native Americans would be able to reap the benefits of living in both geographical areas, specifically that they would be able to gather food from the different sources in each environment. Later, as cities began to emerge, Macon was founded because of its location on the Fall Line. A characteristic of the Fall Line is that most rivers that cross it are only navigable on the east side of Fall Line. Because of this fact, Macon became an important river port since it was the farthest point inland that could be navigated to on the Ocmulgee River.
     As part of out time in the park area (which was woods with trails), Dr. Rood took the class to a creek that was off the trail. Though it was at a low point, this creek had been able to carve out an impressive amount of material overtime. By viewing the opposite bank, we were able to see the different layers the composed the ground in the park area. The top layer, directly underneath the grass, was an organic soil formed from the decomposition of leaves, branches, etc. Underneath that, there was a mixture of soil, sand, and clay, with the amount of clay increasing the further you went down. This layer gave away to the underlying material composed of almost 100 percent clay, which made up the majority of the ravine walls as well as the creekbed itself. The clay was in a few different colors (light gray, yellow-orange, and red) because of different minerals in the clay, and there were several shallow depressions where pockets of non-clay material had been eroded away. These two things combined to give the creek a colorfully interesting appearance.