Greenwood Plantation

West of Thomasville, Georgia, Greenwood Plantation stands as one of the great surviving antebellum estates of the Deep South, a place that has moved through centuries of American history while remaining, remarkably, intact.

The plantation was established by Thomas Jones, one of the pioneer settlers of Thomas County. The Greek Revival main house was begun around eighteen thirty-eight under the direction of English architect John Wind, set on a landscape of longleaf pines and live oaks that made the Red Hills of southwest Georgia some of the most biologically rich land in the American South. Before the Civil War, Jones held numerous enslaved people who worked the plantation's fields. The economy of the place, like every plantation economy, rested entirely on their labor.

The Civil War upended the plantation order but did not destroy the house. The Union blockade collapsed cotton prices, and the end of slavery ended the labor system that had made the plantation profitable. Greenwood moved through different owners and fortunes through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In the eighteen nineties, wealthy Northerners discovered the Red Hills and began purchasing old plantations as winter hunting retreats, the wiregrass quail country attracted sportsmen who could afford to travel. This transformation protected many of the large estates from agricultural subdivision that would otherwise have broken them up. The longleaf pine landscape was managed for quail, which ironically preserved the old-growth habitat.

Greenwood suffered a serious fire in nineteen ninety-three that damaged the main house, but the plantation was restored. It remains in private hands today, part of a landscape of intact historic properties that conservation biologists consider one of the most important privately owned ecosystems in the eastern United States.