The Georgian city of Macon has undergone an incredible transformation from a ghost town to a booming tourist hotspot.
Located in central Georgia, the city is known for its rich history, architecture and Southern charm and is known as a music destination.
With around seven art galleries, 40 theatres and bars, 52 restaurants and 37 shops and boutiques, the city has experienced a significant revitalization.
In recent years, the city has learned a lot about its musical heritage and has opened attractions that highlight its ties to artists such as Little Richard, Otis Redding and the Allman Brothers.
The Otis Redding Foundation was formed in 2007, and a museum dedicated to the Allman Brothers, called “The Big House,” opened in 2009. Little Richard’s childhood home also opened as a community center in 2019.
In recent years, the city has learned a lot about its musical heritage and has opened attractions that highlight its ties to renowned artists.
Little Richard, born Richard Wayne Penniman, was born in the city, while Redding moved there at a young age.
The Otis Redding Foundation plans to expand its museum next year, according to his daughter Karla Redding-Andrews.
She said CNN“Everything is really booming and growing in downtown Macon,” he added, adding that if his father hadn’t died in a plane crash in 1967, he would have stayed in the city.
He added: ‘He would remain right here, his offices were located at 535 Cotton Avenue, which is about four blocks from here.
It would be an integral part of walking these streets every day, inspiring the youth in our programs and in the school system.
Redding had performed early in his career at the now-restored Douglass Theatre, which also featured such talents as James Brown, Ma Rainey and Little Richard.
After local Phil Walden formed Capricorn Records, Duane Allman assembled his band and moved to Macon to work with Capricorn.
The Otis Redding Foundation plans to expand its museum next year, according to his daughter Karla Redding-Andrews. Redding appears here
Located in central Georgia, the city is known for its rich history, architecture and Southern charm and is known as a music destination.
Visitors can now tour his studios and a museum packed with memorabilia and information.
The nearby Allman Brothers Big House Museum is housed in a Tudor home that some members of the band lived in from 1970 to 1973.
It is now filled with memorabilia and personal items and is run by chief executive Richard Brent.
Brent told CNN he moved to the city in 2007 as a construction manager before volunteering at the museum and now running it.
He said: “When I first came here, Macon was a ghost town. I traded in my helmet for some air conditioning and rock ‘n’ roll music.
“If you leave the real world out there, you can come here and feel like you’re in 1970 again.”
Brent said the music history has now become a “backbone of the city” and helps drive its revitalization and tourism.
The Allman Brothers, seen here in Macon in 1969. The Big House Museum is housed in a Tudor home in Macon where some members of the band lived from 1970 to 1973.
In April, officials unveiled markers that tell the long and little-mentioned history of Macon’s 19th-century slave markets.
Richard was known for his flamboyant appearance and androgynous style that would become the norm for popular artists such as David Bowie. Photographed in London in 1972
The city could also soon be on the verge of having Georgia’s first national park at Ocmulgee Mounds.
Georgia is currently home to 49 state parks, 17 historic sites, and one National Park, but never a National Park.
A proposal to redesign and expand the Ocmulgee Mounds Historic Site, located across the river from the city, could change that.
With a bipartisan bill advancing in the U.S. Congress, President Biden could sign the bill into law that would give the state its first national park.
Congress had created the Ocmulgee monument in 1934 and the site has since been expanded and redesignated a National Historic Site.
It protects a prehistoric Native American site that was occupied by multiple different cultures thousands of years ago. Those people built mounds that still stand today.
Descendants of the mound builders, the Muscogee, were moved to Oklahoma hundreds of years later, in the 1830s.
The remains of a burial mound at Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park in Macon
With a bipartisan bill advancing in the U.S. Congress, President Biden could sign the bill into law that would give the state its first national park.
The entrance to Earth Lodge, where Native Americans held council meetings for 1,000 years until their forced removal in the 1820s,
Such a push for the creation of a National Park would only increase the amount of tourism and foot traffic coming to Macon, which has already been driving historical tourism.
In April, officials unveiled markers that tell the long and little-mentioned history of Macon’s 19th-century slave markets.
Macon’s historic downtown area was known as the Cotton Avenue District, an African-American-owned business center colloquially known as Macon’s “Black Wall Street.”
Tracie Revis, director of the Ocmulgee National Park and Preserve Initiative, told CNN: “Macon is really at a moment where they’re saying we need to really reconcile our history and honor all parts of it, good and bad.”
Revis added that after the Muscogee were removed and taken to Oklahoma, the site became a slave plantation.
He added: “So it’s about knowing that this story led to another story that led to the founding of this area. And it’s about reconciling all those stories.”
“That includes indigenous history that we sort of erase and bring back to life and allow the people who went through that to tell their own story.”