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FIVE: From Plantation to Park: Wormsloe since 1938
- University of Georgia Press
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{157} chapter five From Plantation to Park Wormsloe since 1938 in the mid-1970s, Noble Jones’s plantation became a state historic site, owned and preserved by the people of Georgia. The state acquired the historic property as a consequence of a belief in the value of its rich history, especially in connection with the colonial era. Officials also appreciated the natural resources and green space that the estate offered in the midst of the rapidly developing coast. The creation of a state historic site was the culmination of family preservation efforts, marking Georgia’s declaration that Wormsloe’s history and environment were significant enough to warrant government management . Despite this fundamental shift, the shake-ups of the late twentieth century did little to change Wormsloe managers’ beliefs concerning the landscape and its past. Wormsloe’s preservation worked to solidify historical interpretations of the site and concurrent interpretations of the Isle of Hope landscape established over the previous decades. Craig and Elfrida Barrow echoed Wymberley Wormsloe and Augusta De Renne’s modeling of the plantation landscape on real and imagined pasts; when entertaining guests or the occasional tour group, the Barrows also emphasized the plantation’s colonial history as the site’s most important epoch. The creation of Wormsloe State Historic Site only solidi- fied these interpretations. Park officials prized Wormsloe for its early history and they drew up interpretive documents and designed programs focused on Noble Jones’s era. Park guests were presented with signs and artifacts from the colonial period, and the staff portrayed the plantation’s woods and marshes as largely untouched remnants of the world that greeted the eighteenth-century settlers. Together, the family and the state created a Wormsloe myth that was rooted in real but select elements of the plantation’s past. The state acquisition and management of Wormsloe took place within the context of a national and local environmental movement and the historical commemorations of the late 1960s and early 1970s and reflected these public discourses. Academic and popular concern regarding the state of Georgia’s coastal lands encouraged conservation of the estate, as did excitement about the upcoming bicentennial Wormsloe 1960. Map by Dr. Thomas R. Jordan, Center for Remote Sensing and Mapping Science, Department of Geography, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia. [44.204.24.82] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:42 GMT) from plantation to park {159} of the American Revolution. The Wormsloe that state officials envisioned was thus the seat of one of Georgia’s founding fathers and a piece of relatively undisturbed coastal real estate. Wormsloe was one expression of a Lowcountry regionalism that blended environmental and historic preservation into a distinctive sense of place. These interpretations of Wormsloe’s history and landscape, while not completely accurate, may have saved the plantation from further development; neighboring coastal tracts fell under the bulldozer blade, while Wormsloe survives relatively undeveloped to this day. But this colonial emphasis also ensured that the site would survive in a particular form that obfuscated much of the plantation’s long history. After the De Rennes designated Wormsloe a colonial site, the Barrows and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, which managed the park, were unlikely to change course and emphasize other elements of the property’s past. The forested landscape that evoked the initial years of white settlement held little room for stories of sea island cotton agriculture , memories of slavery, the struggles of emancipation, or extensive white and black usage of the marsh. These long-enduring human engagements with the Lowcountry environment were pushed into the interpretive background when they were not omitted completely. Static interpretations of Wormsloe’s history and environment could not prevent ongoing cultural and environmental change, however. Like much of the American South, the world around the old plantation was rapidly changing in the mid-twentieth century. Savannah continued to expand until the suburbs surrounding the Isle of Hope stretched almost unbroken across the solid ground. New piers projected into the estuarial marsh, as likely to provide berths for pleasure craft as for shrimp and crab boats. A new industry, paper manufacturing, led to loblolly pine plantations replacing great swaths of Georgia’s surviving coastal forests, and the related factories polluted Savannah ’s water and air. And a small insect, the southern pine beetle, attacked Wormsloe’s conifers, leading to the largest timbering episode in the plantation’s long history. State officials’ response to the southern pine beetle infestation again brought...