City: Tallahassee   County: Leon   Year: 2024
Location: Baldwin Drive S

Velda Mound is an archaeological site comprised of a small platform mound, a modest plaza, and a village. The site was built and occupied circa 1450-1565 CE by the Apalachee, whose hierarchical society was marked by a settlement pattern composed of mound centered communities, the largest at Lake Jackson, five miles to the west. Platform mounds like Velda were designed to elevate communal structures that served as residences and council houses. The plaza was an open ground used for holding civic and religious events such as stickball games and the Green Corn ceremony. The people who lived here subsisted by farming nearby fields, hunting, and fishing. Archaeological investigation of the Velda village documented domestic structures with hearths, as well as stone tools and pottery. The Apalachee were the historic descendants of what archaeologists call the Fort Walton indigenous culture, which flourished in central north Florida from 1000 CE to circa 1560 CE. Archaeologists documented the site during construction of Interstate 10 in the early 1970s, and the Florida Department of State has preserved it as a park since 1984.