Velda Mound

Velda Mound (8LE44) is a Native American archaeological site in northern Tallahassee, Leon County, Florida, United States. The site consists of a small platform mound, an adjacent plaza, and a surrounding village, and was built and occupied by peoples of the Fort Walton culture, a regional expression of the Mississippian culture, and by their descendants the Apalachee. It lies about 5 miles (8.0 km) east of the much larger Lake Jackson Mounds, the paramount center of the chiefdom that became the Apalachee Province of Spanish Florida. The mound takes its name from the Velda Dairy, which owned the surrounding pasture in the mid-twentieth century. The property was donated to the State of Florida in 1982 and has been maintained as a public park since 1984; it is owned by the state and managed by the Division of Historical Resources of the Florida Department of State with volunteer assistance from the Panhandle Archaeological Society at Tallahassee (PAST). Setting and description Velda Mound stands in the Arbor Hill section of northeastern Tallahassee, in the Tallahassee Hills of the Florida Panhandle. Characterized by fertile red clay soils, the area supported intensive maize agriculture that was unique to the Fort Walton culture. The site comprises a small rectangular platform mound, a modest plaza, and a village area extending south of the mound. Platform mounds of this kind were built to elevate communal buildings that served as residences for leaders and as council houses, while the plaza provided open ground for civic and religious gatherings such as stickball games and the Green Corn Ceremony. Excavation in the village area documented round houses roughly 25 feet (7.6 m) in diameter, associated with small garden plots as well as shared access to larger communal fields. History Cultural context Fort Walton communities in the Tallahassee Hills were among the first in Florida to adopt maize agriculture on a large scale, cultivating maize together with beans and squash while continuing to rely on hunting, fishing, and the gathering of wild resources. Society was hierarchical: a chiefly elite lived at large mound centers such as Lake Jackson, which were supported by smaller single-mound hamlets like Velda and by outlying farmsteads that produced maize. Fort Walton pottery from the site carries the incised scroll motifs characteristic of the wider Fort Walton ceramic tradition, evidence of connections across the regional community. Archaeologists divide the late precontact and contact-period sequence of the Apalachee area into three phases: the Lake Jackson phase, A.D. 1100 to 1500; the Velda phase, A.D. 1500 to 1633, corresponding to the period of earliest European exploration and contact; and the San Luis phase, A.D. 1633 to 1704, representing the Spanish mission period. The Velda phase saw the seat of Apalachee power shift from Lake Jackson to Anhaica, where the Hernando de Soto expedition wintered in 1539 and 1540, and mound construction across the province ceased. Occupation and abandonment The mound was raised in about 1450 and the site was occupied into the protohistoric period. Sources differ on when occupation ended: the Florida Department of State places the occupation at approximately 1450 to 1565, while the department's conservation management plan for the site gives a terminal date of about 1625. In either case the site was abandoned before Franciscan missions were established in Apalachee beginning in 1633, and no evidence has been found of later Spanish or British colonial occupation. Depletion of nearby resources has been suggested as the reason for abandonment. Timber for construction and firewood would have been exhausted within a practical distance of the village, and soil fertility may have declined; communities in such circumstances relocated to fresh land and allowed older fields to recover. Damage and preservation In March 1922, Emma Boyd, head of the vocal music department at Florida State College for Women, was killed at an Indian mound near Tallahassee when the wall of an excavation collapsed on her. Boyd and two companions had hired laborers with teams to cut a trench about six feet deep along the side of the mound; when the three women entered the trench to examine it, the wall gave way, burying Boyd completely. Her companions were only partly covered and one was able to summon help, but Boyd was dead when she was reached. During the 1950s the mound stood in pasture belonging to the Velda Dairy, then the largest farming operation in Leon County. In that decade a trench about ten feet wide was bulldozed through the center of the mound, and artifact hunters dug into it repeatedly, damaging its structure and profile. The dairy land was later sold and developed as the Arbor Hill residential subdivision. The parcel containing the mound was donated to the State of Florida in 1982. The state designated the property a park, cleared the heavy vegetation that had grown over the mound, and stabilized the damaged earthwork; the Florida Department of State has maintained it as a public park since 1984, assisted by volunteers from the Panhandle Archaeological Society at Tallahassee. Archaeology Velda Mound was first recorded in the 1940s. Fieldwork between the 1960s and the 1980s exposed two houses immediately south of the mound, surrounded by pits dug by the inhabitants for a variety of purposes, together with an above-ground food storage structure. The village deposits also yielded domestic hearths, stone tools, and pottery. The site was further documented during the construction of Interstate 10 in the early 1970s. Material from the site figured in John F. Scarry's analyses of late Fort Walton settlement, including studies of the spatial organization and refuse disposal patterns of a farmstead at the Velda site published in 1984. Modern interpretation Two interpretive signs stand in Velda Mound Park. An undated panel installed by the Division of Historical Resources, titled Velda Mound: In the Heartland of Fort Walton Culture, describes Fort Walton society, daily life at the village, maize agriculture, and the history of the park. A Florida Heritage Site marker was dedicated in 2024 by the Tallahassee Historical Society, the Panhandle Archaeological Society at Tallahassee (PAST), and the Florida Department of State. See also Leon-Jefferson culture List of Mississippian sites References Citations Sources Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources (2010). Velda Mound Archaeological Site, Leon County, Florida: Conservation Management Plan (PDF) (Report).: CS1 maint: url-status (link) Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources (2024). Velda Mound (Florida Heritage Site marker F-1287). Velda Mound Park, Tallahassee, Florida. Retrieved July 29, 2026. Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources, Bureau of Archaeological Research. "Archaeological Stabilization Guide" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on October 6, 2012. Retrieved April 20, 2012.: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) Keel, Frank (September 2003). An Archaeological Assessment of the Bradfordville Commercial Tract in Leon County, Florida (PDF) (Report). Archived from the original (PDF) on February 14, 2005. Retrieved April 15, 2012. "Sudden Death of Emma Boyd". The Roland Record. Roland, Iowa. March 23, 1922. Scarry, John F. (1984). Spatial Organization of a Late Fort Walton Farmstead at the Velda Site, Leon County, Florida. Scarry, John F. (1984). Spatial Organization and Refuse Disposal Patterns at a Late Prehistoric Velda Phase Farmstead in the Tallahassee Hills. "Miss Emma Boyd Loses Life in a Most Shocking Way". Tallahassee Democrat. March 18, 1922. Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources. Velda Mound: In the Heartland of Fort Walton Culture (interpretive panel). Velda Mound Park, Tallahassee, Florida. Retrieved July 29, 2026. Waters, Gifford J. (2005). Maintenance and Change of 18th Century Mission Indian Identity: A Multi-Ethnic Contact Situation (PhD dissertation). University of Florida. Further reading Marrinan, Rochelle A.; White, Nancy Marie (2007). "Modeling Fort Walton Culture in Northwest Florida". Southeastern Archaeology. 26 (2).