Faith, Fields and Longleaf Pine: Jimmy Carter's Family Farm Is Preserved for Georgia
A conservation nonprofit has bought about 2,458 acres of Carter family farmland and an adjoining tract near Plains, Georgia, and plans to open it for hunting and fishing as soon as 2027.
By JACK HOLLISTERHistory & Culture · Nov 12, 7:00 PM
GEORGIA — A stretch of old farm fields, ponds and pine woods west of Plains, Georgia, the ground that shaped the 39th president, is headed into public hands. The Conservation Fund announced Monday that it has acquired roughly 2,458 acres that include the farm where Jimmy Carter worked as a boy, and it plans to open the property for hunting, fishing and other outdoor recreation as soon as 2027. The land will be folded into the neighboring Lanahassee Creek Wildlife Management Area, growing it to nearly 7,000 acres. The Associated Press, citing The Washington Post, put the purchase price at $8.5 million.
It is a fitting outcome for land Carter kept returning to his whole life. He died in December 2024 at 100, a little more than a year after his wife, Rosalynn. And it is a reminder that the most lasting conservation often starts not with a mandate from Washington but with a family deciding what its land should be for.
Some confusion is understandable, because Plains already has a Carter farm that welcomes visitors. The National Park Service operates the Jimmy Carter Boyhood Farm in the community of Archery, about two miles west of town, where Carter lived from age…