Oakville, Alabama
| Oakville, Alabama | |
|---|---|
| Unincorporated community | |
 Oakville, Alabama
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| Coordinates: 34°26′43″N 87°09′44″W / 34.44528°N 87.16222°WCoordinates: 34°26′43″N 87°09′44″W / 34.44528°N 87.16222°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Alabama |
| County | Lawrence |
| Elevation | 640 ft (200 m) |
| Time zone | Central (CST) (UTC-6) |
| • Summer (DST) | CDT (UTC-5) |
| Area code(s) | 256 |
| GNIS feature ID | 160286 |
Oakville is an unincorporated community located in the southeast corner of Lawrence County, Alabama, United States. The community has two parks, 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 roads 203 and 187.
The Oakville Indian Mounds Park and Museum is an 83-acre (340,000 m2) state park dedicated to ancient Native American monuments and the historic Cherokee nation of the Southeast. 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 Copena Ceremonial Mound, the largest ceremonial 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 state museum is designed in the style of a Cherokee council house, as these were the dominant indigenous people of the area at the time of European encounter. It provides exhibits on the Copena culture, displaying more than 1000 archeological artifacts that were excavated on site. It also includes material on the historic Cherokee nation, whose people had migrated to the area and inhabited it by the time of European encounter in the 17th century. They are not descendants of the Copena culture but are believed to have migrated south from the Great Lakes area in ancient times.
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