Robert George Stanton

The third year of the Moccasin Bend Lecture Series is set with experts in national parks, American Indians and the Civil War.

* On Sept. 8, Robert George Stanton, the first black to serve as director of the National Park Service, will speak on the importance of national parks and their connections to young people.

* On Oct. 6, lawyer and author Russell S. Bonds will talk about his experiences growing up in Marietta, Ga., a few blocks from the spot where James Andrews and his men first boarded the locomotive called the General on April 12, 1862. Mr. Bonds later wrote “Stealing the General: The Great Locomotive Chase and the First Medal of Honor.”

* On Nov. 3, Alfred Berryhill will talk about American Indians. He is 2nd Chief of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and serves a chairman of the Tribal Trade and Commerce Board.

Mr. Stanton, 67, became the 15th Director of the National Park Service in 1997 and served until the end of the Clinton Administration in 2001.

In a telephone interview Friday, his advice to developers of the new Moccasin Bend National Archeological District — part of the Chattanooga-Chickamauga National Military Park — is to continue to connect the young people to the history and resources there.

“Parks are tremendous places of learning,” said Mr. Stanton, who has retired from the park service and begun a second career as a consultant and college professor. He currently is a Senior Fellow at Texas A&M University in the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences.

That is especially true at Moccasin Bend, he said.

Archeological studies show Moccasin Bend, a foot-shaped peninsula in the Tennessee River within the city limits of Chattanooga, has been a crossroads of civilizations and conflicts on the North American continent for more than 10,000 years. With so much history, the Bend offers a important chronicle of human history ranging from American Indian villages to Civil War earthworks. Most of Moccasin Bend, about 755 acres, was designated in 2003 as a unit of the National Park System.

Moccasin Bend’s park designation is indicative of the historical stories associated with the site, said Shelley Andrews, executive director of Friends of Moccasin Bend National Park.

“And all three of our speakers are experts in different areas of our history,” she said.

The Friends organization, in partnership with the National Park Service, is in the planning process for the construction of a world-class interpretive center at the Moccasin Bend National Archeological District, she said. The site for the center has been chosen between Hamm Road and the Tennessee River. Design and construction will begin probably in the next year, Ms. Andrews said.