The proposed Ocmulgee National Park just grew by 136 acres thanks to a land donation by the Georgia Department of Transportation.

The agency recently inked a deal to transfer the land along Interstate 16 southeast of Macon, Eric Duff, the agency’s environmental administrator, told the State Transportation Board Wednesday.

The property is mostly a thriving wetlands area. The DOT acquired the Bibb County property in 1998 as wetlands mitigation for a freeway in nearby Twiggs County.

“It’s a continuation of the work that we do every day to improve the relationships with our tribal partners, with the National Park Service,” Duff said.

The handoff is the latest sign of progress in a bipartisan effort to promote the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park into a national park and preserve.

It would be a simple name change with major implications for tourism and development.

While the United States has 63 national parks, the vast majority are out West. Georgia has none, but four neighbors — South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Florida — either share one or have one of their own.

Ocmulgee is among 370 lesser properties overseen by the National Park Service. It draws around 160,000 a year, but national park status could increase that nearly tenfold to almost 1.4 million annual visitors within a decade, advocates say. Studies indicate this would generate thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in annual economic activity.

National park status would also promote recognition of a painful chapter in American history when Native Americans were driven from their ancestral lands in Georgia.

The Ocmulgee Mounds area was continuously inhabited for at least 12,000 years, beginning with the Ice Age, says the National Park Service. During the Mississippian Period, starting in the 900s, native peoples constructed mounds for their elite, landmarks that endure as a central attraction.

The desire to promote Ocmulgee to national park status has been in circulation since at least 1933, when the Macon Historical Society and Junior Chamber of Commerce pitched it. The next year, the local congressman, Democratic Rep. Carl Vinson, introduced legislation for a national park. He wound up with a lesser designation, but the dream for top-tier status lived on.

Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle have been collaborating to make the promotion a reality, with nearly every member of the Georgia delegation on board. And the Muscogee Nation, whose ancestors were forcibly moved to Oklahoma by the U.S. government in 1836, is working on the promotion. The tribe would have a role in guiding the new national park’s management.

Seth Clark, the Macon mayor pro tem and current leader of the grassroots force behind this movement, said he expects the congressional committee process to begin in a couple of months. It was underway last year but got derailed by bigger issues, such as the federal budget. Clark, who is executive director of The Ocmulgee National Park and Preserve Initiative, told the transportation board that he expects the mission to be complete during this Congress, which ends in January 2027.

The current historical park would anchor the national park. Proponents would raise money to buy another 7,100 acres, expanding the attraction to about 10,000 acres. The addition would be a federally managed preserve with fishing and hunting.

The Georgia DOT land donation, inked in April but revealed at Wednesday’s transportation committee meeting, expands the core park. The transaction concludes a process that started more than a dozen years ago.

The National Park Service asked Georgia DOT in 2012 if it was interested in including the land as part of a national park feasibility study. The state agreed. Then, at the start of this decade, the federal government asked for the land. In 2023, the state sent a letter of intent to transfer it.

“This gift is more than acreage,” said Jacob Collins, a Park Service tribal liaison at Thursday’s DOT board meeting. “It represents the preservation of sacred grounds.”

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