Isle of Hope and Long Island, Savannah, Georgia. County/parish: Chatham.
Added to the National Register of Historic Places April 26, 1973. NRIS 73000615.
1 contributing building. 1 contributing site. 2 contributing structures.
The Wormsloe State Historic Site, originally known as Wormsloe Plantation, is a state historic site near Savannah, Georgia, in the southeastern United States. The site consists of 822 acres (3.33 km2), protecting part of what was once the Wormsloe Plantation, a large estate established by one of the founders of colonial Georgia, Noble Jones. The site includes a 1.5-mile (2.4 km) dirt road lined with southern live oaks, the ruins of a small house with fortified walls built of tabby, a museum, and an area with recreations of colonial structures such as a blacksmithing forge and a house similar to those first built in the colony of Georgia (or as housing for enslaved people).
In 1736, Jones obtained a grant for 500 acres (2.0 km2) of land on the Isle of Hope which would form the core of Wormsloe. He constructed a fortified house on the southeastern tip of the island overlooking the Skidaway Narrows, a strategic section of the Skidaway River, located along the Intracoastal Waterway roughly halfway between downtown Savannah and the Atlantic Ocean. The fortified house was part of a network of defensive structures established by James Oglethorpe, founder of Georgia, and early Georgia colonists to protect Savannah from a potential Spanish invasion. Jones subsequently developed Wormsloe into a small plantation, and his descendants built a large mansion at the site which they used as a country residence.
The State of Georgia acquired the bulk of the Wormsloe Plantation in 1973 after a lengthy court battle over taxes which went to the supreme court of Georgia and opened it to the public as a state historic site in 1979.
(read more...)National Park Service documentation: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/93207375