Macon Magazine

58 maconmagazine.com | August/September 2025 Beneath the blacktop of a grocery center parking lot today lies what was once a battlefield over segregated soil. Read and reflect on Macon's history and how the land use of the past continues to shape our shared future. Greenspace W I T H B L A C K A N D W H I T E L I N E S STORY BY MARGARET PETH | PHOTOS BY JESSICA WHITLEY TOP Postcard of Ponds in Bacons eld Park. 1930-1945, courtesy of Boston Public Library. A Tichnor Brothers Collection. A message from Macon's past... Bacons eld Shopping Center, named after U.S. Sen. Augustus O. Bacon, a Georgian and Confederate veteran of the Civil War. Bacons eld Shopping Center now stands at the site of the former Bacons eld Park, once a whites-only, city-operated park and recreation facility that encompassed 75 acres of land along the Ocmulgee River. The park included sports facilities, a swimming pool, elaborate gardens and greens, and a women's clubhouse. The park was established after the land was left to the city of Macon in Bacon's will, which expressly stated it was to promote the "the use, bene t, and enjoyment of the white women and children of A s you come into Macon at the end of I-16 and look out onto the east bank of the Ocmulgee River, an abandoned building looms over the interstate. Nestled just behind it is a bustling shopping center. Thousands of cars pass this busy commercial area every day. Some Maconites may only know this area as it stands today, but many may remember a time when this now cramped and aging shopping plaza was a park. While the expansive park that once characterized the riverbank of East Macon is lost to the past, the legacy of the land's history remains in its name:

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