Oakville, Alabama

Oakville is a small community located in the southeast corner of Lawrence County, Alabama. The community is unincorporated. The community is known for two parks located in the area, one dedicated to 20th-century African-American athlete Jesse Owens and the other to Middle Woodland period and Cherokee Native Americans.

The Jesse Owens museum was opened in 1996. Owens was born and spent the majority of his childhood in the community before his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio. The Jesse Owens Memorial Park and Museum is at the intersection of county road 203 and 187.

The Oakville Indian Mounds Park and Museum is an 83-acre (340,000 m²) state park dedicated to ancient and historic Native American monuments. It preserves twenty 2,000-year-old mounds built by Middle Woodland-era (1-500 CE) prehistoric indigenous peoples. The Copena culture developed out of the Hopewell tradition. They were named for their distinctive use of copper and galena, a lead ore mineral. The most significant earthworks are a burial mound and the largest ceremonial earthwork mound surviving in present-day Alabama. The latter is 27 feet (8.2 m) high, with a base of 1.8 acres (7,300 m²). The platform top has an area of 1-acre (4,000 m²). The Copena culture developed from the complex Hopewell tradition, whose people had a wide regional trading network across the continent.

The museum, designed in the style of a Cherokee council house, provides exhibits on the Copena culture, with more than 1000 archeological artifacts excavated on site. It also includes material on the historic Cherokee nation, whose people inhabited the area at the time of European encounter. It also has an exhibit on the so-called Black Dutch people of the area, mixed-race descendants of European and Cherokee unions. In addition to the mounds and museum, the Black Warriors’ Path goes past the mounds. Beginning in Cullman County, Alabama it passes through the state and was long used by Native Americans. Later pioneers called it Mitchell Trace.

The park also has a lake and fishing pier. The street address for the park is 1219 County Rd. 187, Danville, Alabama, 35619.

References

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External links

• "Friends of Oakville Mounds, Inc., Alabama Grassroots Clearinghouse, Auburn University