McIntosh Reserve Park will undergo extensive rehabilitation efforts beginning in the coming weeks, with crews working to fix the damage caused by widespread flooding last September.

At its meeting this upcoming Tuesday, the Carroll County Board of Commissioners will vote to award the contract for flood and storm damage cleanup, and once work begins, it should only be a month before the park is restored to what it was before the floods.

The park was closed for roughly nine months after last September’s storms, reopening this year just in time for the Memorial Day weekend — historically, the busiest two days of the year for the park.

Once the flood waters receded, the Federal Emergency Management Agency began assessing the damage and agreed to fund seven different rehabilitation projects throughout the park. These projects were ranked in terms of degree of damage, and following an archeological survey, work began to clear the 58-acre portion of the park most affected by the floodwaters, which included the main camping area that runs by the Chattahoochee River.

It was a priority to open this area first, said park Director Darryl Johnson, because the river itself is one of the park’s main draws.

Roughly three months ago, a team of archeologists went into the park to try and determine which areas needed to be especially protected during the ensuing cleanup. The first step in this effort was for workers with New South Associates, the firm hired at around $9,000 to perform the work, to form a grid of the land, at which point the decision was made on how many “test pits” would be needed to be dug in order for crews to glean an understanding of what areas likely contain the most artifacts, Johnson said.

In the end, 195 test pits were cleared, and of those, artifacts were found in roughly one-third. It’s hard to say how much of these artifacts are historically significant, Johnson said, because that classification is put on anything that dates back to before 1960.

Though it’s unlikely the repair work will have any impact on the sanctity of the artifacts found there, the EPD is requiring that a single archaeologist be on site to monitor the progress and ensure the historical elements of the park remain intact. This is purely a precautionary measure, Johnson said, as park staff is always on site and will be monitoring the cleanup efforts as well.

“The EPD is only calling for a monitoring situation because some of these organizations that they deal with, they’re not in a spot to monitor the work. We’re very much there with boots on the ground where we watch exactly what the contractors are doing,” he said. “They did find some lithic material, pottery shards, things of that nature, but they expected that type of result because the park was a place where there was habitation for a long time ... But they’re so deep, we won’t impact them, but they want to be cautious.”

The real task for the cleanup crews is going to be dealing with the massive amount of sand that was brought in by the floods and trying to minimalize the impact of the sand on the surrounding trees and vegetation. Although sand is not incredibly densely packed into itself, meaning it shouldn’t slow ground water traveling to the roots of plants, the weight of the sand may damage these roots and ultimately kill the vegetation years down the road, Johnson said.

The land was previously the home of Chief William McIntosh, a prominent leader of the Creek Indian tribe who lived there during the early part of the 19th century. It was only after McIntosh signed the Treaty of Indian Springs on Feb. 12, 1825, relinquishing all the Creeks’ land in Georgia in exchange for $400,000, that settlers began moving into what is modern Carroll County and a government was formally established.