Fort Hawkins was established in 1806 by President Thomas Jefferson and Indain Agent Col. Benjamin Hawkins as an official U.S. Army Fort and Indian Factory for trading and meeting with Native Americans. At the time, it was the western frontier and a wilderness. It overlooked the ancient Indian Mounds of the "Old Fields" held sacred by the Muskogee Creek Nation, the Ocmulgee River, the Lower Creek Pathway that became the Federal Road connecting Washington, D.C. to Mobile and New Orleans, and the future site of the city of Macon founded across the river seventeen years later.