The culturally rich site would be included in national military park.
CHATTANOOGA, TENN.- A sacred peninsula that contains centuries-old Indian burial grounds and Civil War relics may soon be protected and added to Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park.
A bill before Congress would preserve 780 acres of Moccasin Bend by adding it to the military park. The area would become the Moccasin Bend Archaeological District. The legislation would enable creation of a visitor interpretive center and require the park to develop a management plan for the site within three years.
Many conservationists and American Indians have long sought to protect Moccasin Bend, a unique site whose historical significance includes 10,000 years of American Indian occupation and a Union siege of Chattanooga during the Civil War. The site has remained relatively preserved and undeveloped over the years, but site advocates say it is just a matter of time before resources - including burial grounds that have often been looted-are lost.
"Almost every place you step your foot is an archaeology site," Nancy Crowe, a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokees working to protect Moccasin Bend, recently told the Chattanooga Times Free Press. "We want it preserved and protected so time or human greed don't destroy it."
Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.), the bill's House sponsor, originally sought to make the site a stand-alone park unit. There was serious concern, however, that components within the site's boundaries, namely a state psychiatric hospital and a golf course owned by the city of Chattanooga, would make Moccasin Bend too difficult to properly protect. The compromise to protect it as part of the military park gained strong support.
"The goal is to try to protect the resources of Moccasin Bend that can be preserved now," said Don Barger, senior director of NPCA's Southeast region. "That is something we wholeheartedly support."
Park advocates say that if, in the future, agreements were made to ensure that the hospital and golf course could become part of the site and protected, Moccasin Bend may then be upgraded to a stand-alone park unit. In the meantime, including the site in the military park would be a victory for conservation.
"Most of all, we do not want the project to languish and do not want the property to sit there unused," said Mickey Robbins, president of the Friends of Moccasin Bend.
Passage of the Moccasin Bend legislation was temporarily derailed in November, when several other bills were attached to it in the Senate. Wamp has said, however, that he is very confident that the bill will pass through the Senate and House early this year.
Most of the land that would comprise the archaeological district was included in 1984 on the National Register of Historic Places. The Moccasin Bend bill states that the site's archaeological and subsurface resources, such as Civil War era items like cannon displacements and rifle pits, are unmatched within the current National Park System.
The length of continuous cultural occupation at Moccasin Bend-10,000 years-is not duplicated anywhere else within the park system, the legislation states. Rangers at the site will also tell the story of the removal of Cherokee Indians from their ancestral homes in 1838 and 1839, along the Trail of Tears.
If the legislation becomes law, park officials said they would begin a management plan for Moccasin Bend, and that interpretive programs could begin fairly soon.
