MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — One man wants to stop a proposed aquatic center at Milledgeville's Walter B. Williams Park.
He thinks the site may be filled with unmarked graves, and he says he has some four-legged experts to back him up.
Edwin Atkins says the four acres of land Baldwin County wants to build their new aquatic center on potentially has hundreds of human remains within the building site.
"This is too historically important to be the site of a swimming pool,” Atkins said.
Atkins, a Central Georgian historian, says the site where the aquatic center is proposed to be built on is where the Georgia State Prison Farm operated from 1911 to the mid-1930s.
The brick building was torn down in 2018.
"There's at least 1,500 deaths that occurred on this. Also 162 electrocutions were taken place here,” Atkins said. “From 1898 to 1911, we think the graves were scattered. There are articles that said they would lay them behind the prison, and then in the morning, the fellow prisoners would bury them.”
He says most of the prisoners were African American, and one was a Blackhawk Native American.
He says it's hallowed ground.
"It’s like building a pickleball court at the Old Governor’s mansion,” Atkins said. “Even if there's no graves here, it doesn't fit because this is a historic site that was on the national registry. The buildings gone, but the history’s not gone.”
Atkins says the possibility of unmarked graves is high. That's where Felon, the cadaver-sniffing dog, comes in.
"He's indicating that there's odor inside the fence,” Kerri Gebler said.
Gebler is a GEMA licensed search and rescue handler. She owns Felon.
"Most of our searches are for crime scenes, missing victims, drowning victims. So, there's usually one source of odor. Here there's multiple sources,” Gebler said.
She says Felon is trained to sniff out human remains, even down to a drop of blood. In this case, Felon is sniffing for bones.
“We teach what’s called the trained final response. We want them to give a very clear indication that they're on the source of the odor,” Gebler said. “You can see the change in behavior. He’ll be running along using his nose, but when he catches the target odor, which is the human decomposition, he’ll close his mouth. Then he’ll turn around and, usually, sit and wait for his prize.”
Gebler says Felon stopped in around 20 places along the perimeter of the site.
"The problem with multiple graves is there's odor everywhere. There's so much odor they don't always know where to sit,” Gebler said.
She says it’s not okay to build anything on top of these graves.
“A lot of these people were mentally ill. They shouldn’t be forgotten. A cemetery is supposed to be sacred ground,” she said.
Atkins says that the ultimate goal is to let the cadaver dogs into the building site to see if there really are human remains.
County Manager Carlos Tobar told us last year the State Office of Historic Preservation cleared the site for construction.
Tobar says that means authorities don't believe there are graves in the area that will be dug up.
Funds to build the first phase of the aquatic center were included in the 2022 SPLOST funds. Money for second phase is included in the plans for 2023 SPLOST.
Tobar says once the site is built, they are required to build a monument that tells the history of the prison and why it was there.