Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park

I’m not quite sure what I was expecting, but I guess I didn’t think I’d be climbing stairs to be on top of hills. The history of these mounds are pretty significant, but the park’s only redeeming quality to me was really the difficulty of the trail.

There are old mound sites scattered around the southeast, and the most impressively maintained ones I’ve seen are at Cahokia, IL (Cahokia), Macon, GA (Ocmulgee), and Blakely, GA (Kolomoki, not so far away from here). It must be said that these mounds are not as impressive as those, not are they maintained as well as those.
But mounds are always interesting, and with the grassiness of the mounds you can see how, even with their impressive heights, they just blended in with their surroundings over the centuries. Looking at them, you may start to second-​guess everyday scenery. There were others here before us, y’know.
There are two mounds you can ascend with ladders, one within a few minutes of the parking lot and the other within a few seconds. There’s a few informational plaques, some picnic spaces, and a restroom. There’s also a nature trail that we didn’t take — it had already been a pretty big day.
This ended up being the last thing we did on our brief afternoon in Tallahassee, and while we were glad we saw it it couldn’t help feeling a little anticlimactic. My advice would be to see this and then move on to the impressive Mission San Luis reconstruction — you’re following the sequence of history, and you might enjoy both sites more as a result.

Honestly, there is not a whole lot to see or do at this park, but it is still worth visiting, given the $ 3 per vehicle admission and easy accessibility from I-​10 and North Monroe.
I would counsel that if you are only in the area for a limited time, while Jackson Mounds State Park should certainly be on your historical tour list (nothing quite like seeing the real thing!) if I had limited time or wanted to appreciate the mounds in their historical context, both the Mission San Luis and the Museum of Florida history should prove quite illuminating on the Native American and early colonial period of this part of Florida’s history.
The main attraction at Jackson Mounds are two large mounds built circa 1100 – 1200 AD at what is believed to have been a major center of politics and religion for the Native Americans in the area. Both mounds have a flight of wooden stairs leading up to the top, where you can… look at the grass on top of the mounds. There are also informational panels around the park detailing the «methods used to build the mounds, who the builders were, and what they used the mounds for.
Really though, what you are seeing is essentially a big grassy hill, which may prove underwhelming for many. The novelty of the experience is the awe-​inspiring effort it took these Indians to build these incredibly immense earthworks using only the most primitive of tools. It’s really quite an engineering feat, which you can really only appreciate after a breathless climb to the top of the main mound at the rear of the park.
Finally, there is also a very nice «interpretive trail» you can hike through the woods near the mounds. This includes the standard plaques pointing our magnolia trees, ferns, and our other local flora. We saw lots of lizard and squirrels, but no other wildlife. The trail sort of loops around itself so you end up back where you started (get a map from the main billboard in the parking lot) and is pretty effortless to hike, being quite short and not having too much variation in elevation.
It is also very interesting to experience the «microclimate» found in this apparently unusual (for Florida) forest ecosystem. It was noticeably cooler in the woods than the surrounding area and other woods I’ve been around here under similar conditions. The trail is apparently a popular place for runners, as we saw both family groups and people with their leashed dogs jogging on the trail. We also encountered a barefoot and shirtless man walking back to his vehicle at parking lot located on Doris St. at the rear of the park, which was rather odd and remains unexplained.

Exhibits near the Mounds have good written explanations of the significance of the mounds and of the connections that archeologists have been able to find between these Mounds dwellers and those in other parts of FL and in other states. To actually learn in the park about Mounds dwellers, absorbing the exhibits is absolutely necessary.
Even if all that you want is an ordinary park not far outside of I10, the trails, woods and stream are very much worth wandering. At the time of this review, no admission was being charged.