AmeriCorps Program Arrives this Month to Refurbish Boardwalk at UA’s Moundville Archaeological Park

MOUNDVILLE, Ala. – A team from AmeriCorps’ Denver campus of the National Civilian Community Corps will arrive this month to rehabilitate nearly a mile and half of boardwalk at The University of Alabama’s Moundville Archaeological Park.

Already needing routine maintenance, the largest section of the park’s boardwalk was hit hard by Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, forcing its closure for safety reasons.

The group is to arrive March 18. Part of AmeriCorps, the National Civilian Community Corps is a full-time residential program for men and women, ages 18 to 24. Drawn from the models of the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s and the U.S. military, AmeriCorps is funded through the Corporation for National and Community Service. AmeriCorps is a national network of more than 70,000 volunteers.

“Moundville has a lot of pressing needs that we just don’t have the staff or funding to address,” says Chip Wente, a VISTA volunteer at Moundville who wrote the proposal for the NCCC visit. “We ranked the park’s refurbishment projects and decided that rebuilding our main nature trail was by far the most important.” Should the team finish the boardwalk earlier than projected several smaller projects are slated to keep them busy.

The Moundville site, consisting of some 30 mounds, was built by community labor during the 13th century. Later, it fell into disrepair and finally abandoned by Native Americans in the 1450s. When the area was settled, the land composing the site was bought by different owners. By the 1930s, the mounds had suffered from decades of neglect and misuse. Farmers plowed up and planted areas between the mounds and even on top of one or two of the mounds themselves. Forest had taken over other mounds and erosion had done major damage throughout the site.

From 1933 to 1942, the Civilian Conservation Corps, a depression-era relief program, worked at the Moundville site. The corps excavated more than 45,000 square feet of the site to prepare for construction projects. Workers brought widespread erosion under control, planting acres of grass and hundreds of trees, shrubs and saplings. They restored mounds, rebuilt ponds thought to be aboriginal and built picnic shelters, tables and benches and installed a water and sewage system from pipe they manufactured themselves. The CCC also built a caretaker’s house, the park’s administration building and, their crowning achievement, the Jones Archaeological Museum.

“It’s very interesting to contemplate how community labor has been integral to Moundville since it came into existence,” says Bill Bomar, Moundville park director. “Moundville Archaeological Park and the Jones Archaeological Museum are a direct result of the efforts of the Civilian Conservation Corps in the first half of this century. Now, some 80 years later, a program born out of the CCC returns to help Moundville rise again. With the renovation of the Jones Archaeological Museum in full swing, the NCCC will assist the park as it is revived as a site of national prominence. We are so pleased to have their help.”

An earlier NCCC team helped Moundville Archaeological Park set up and run the 2008 Moundville Native American Festival this past fall. After the festival, this team was scheduled to start rebuilding the boardwalk but got pulled to work on disaster relief projects arising from Hurricane Katrina.

“The team we had last fall was truly awesome,” says Betsy Irwin, director for the Moundville Native American Festival. “The festival was very successful due in large part to the NCCC’s help. We were disappointed when they had to leave early, but we kept submitting grants to get them back at the park. After getting to know the first team, our entire staff is eagerly anticipating meeting and working with the NCCC team from the Denver campus.”

Moundville Archaeological Park is 13 miles south of Tuscaloosa off Alabama 69 South. For more information about the park, its programs or the NCCC, contact Claudia Cummings at 205/371-2234 or e-mail her at ccumming@ua.edu or visit http://moundville.ua.edu.