CARTERSVILLE, Ga. --- You could call it Kenneth Akins' dream job.

He was a child when he first came to the Etowah Indian Mounds in northeast Georgia, a state historic site that features one mound 67 feet high, two smaller bumps in the ground and several other rises that indicate where other mounds were.

"I was excited when I came here as a kid," recalled Mr. Akins, now the site's manager. "Turned me on to this place, turned me on to history."

Mr. Akins got a job with the state park system in 1981. He was working at Fort King George in Darien when he finally got the position he had always wanted.

Now, Mr. Akins is cutting back. Savings in water-use are helping Etowah weather budget cuts. Grass is being cut less often.

And there is the returning prospect that the state's deepening fiscal crisis could force the Department of Natural Resources to close as many as six state parks and seven historic sites.

"It comes after state park budgets have been cut every year since 2002," said Andy Fleming, the executive director of Friends of Georgia State Parks and Historic Sites. "We feel that, right now, the parks could really suffer if we have any additional cuts."

Nearly $25.1 million of DNR's $115.8 million budget is wrapped up in parks, and Gov. Sonny Perdue has asked each agency for plans to slice spending by as much as 10 percent to deal with a shortfall that could surpass $2 billion.

According to DNR, about 29,091 people attended Etowah in fiscal year 2007. That would make the park one of the least visited in the system, even as DNR says visitation will be one of several factors used to decide which parks to close.

The department stresses that no final decisions have been made, and Mr. Perdue or the Legislature could decide to spare the parks by cutting elsewhere.

"It may be that once we have 'the list,' we can work with local communities to find alternative ways to keep those facilities operating closer to normal ... which may modify what ends up on the final list," department spokeswoman Beth Brown wrote in an e-mail.