Shortly after leaving Providence Canyon State Park, we noticed a sign for Plains, Georgia. It was still early in the afternoon, so we decided to divert there so we could visit the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site.
Plains is home to all things Jimmy Carter. It’s the small town where he was born, grew up, based his presidential campaign and is also where he now lives.
Our visit started at Plains High School which doubles up as a museum and visitor center for the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site. We had Truffles with us, so I waited outside while Shae went inside to get the scoop.
As the school also contains the museum, there are apparently all kinds of exhibits inside. Unfortunately we had to give it a miss as pets aren’t allowed inside.
Shae came back from the visitor center though with a map of Plains that had all the points of interest marked on it. There were two sites in one direction with the remainder in the opposite direction, so we set off for the two sites to the north.
The first one we stopped at was the Jimmy Carter Peanut of Plains Statue. Standing at 13 feet tall, it was created back in 1976 by the Indiana Democratic Party. It’s an unusual sculpture to be dedicated to a politician, but it’s because Jimmy Carter was formerly a peanut farmer.
Our next stop was Maranatha Baptist Church, the church where President Carter still teaches Sunday School on occasion.
After stopping by the church, we made our way into downtown Plains where several more of the noteworthy sites were located. We parked on the corner of N Bond St and U.S. 280 W and walked across the road to take a photo of the sign above Plain Peanuts.
We then stopped in at Plains Trading Post to see if they had a pin in the shape of Georgia. That’s because pins of each state are what we’re collecting as a souvenir of our 50 state road trip. This was a couple of days before we were due to leave Georgia, so we didn’t have long left to find one.
Plains Trading Post is apparently home to the largest collection of political memorabilia in the south. Thankfully they were also home to a Georgia pin, so we bought that and continued looking around Plains.
Just down the road was the Plains Train Depot, the headquarters of President Carter’s presidential campaign.
The building is open to visitors with no admittance fee (and seemingly no staff members on site either.) There are a few displays inside providing more information about the campaign.
One of the interesting tidbits was the reason why this particular building was chosen as the campaign headquarters. Apparently it was the only available building in Plains with a bathroom!
On a nearby street corner there was a historic marker about President Carter.
Crossing over the road, we came to the Billy Carter service station. Billy Carter was the president’s brother and the service station ended up serving as the headquarters for journalists covering the 1976 presidential campaign.
This was one of the last remaining sites to visit in downtown Plains, so we hopped back in our car to visit the Jimmy Carter Boyhood Farm. Along the way, we drove past President Carter’s current home. Due to obvious security concerns, it’s not possible to get anywhere close to his home, with Secret Service buildings blocking the view of his home from the road.
It only took five minutes to get from downtown Plains to his boyhood farm. Unfortunately it was 4:40 pm by that point and there was a sign saying the gate closed at 5pm. We therefore had to rush through the grounds in order to at least see everything before it closed.
President Carter’s parents used to run a general store on the property. This store has been recreated in one of the buildings to give visitors a sense of what it would’ve looked like back in the day.
They’ve also included a list of prices from back then.
Having rushed around the property, we headed back into Plains to stop by Plains United Methodist Church. This was where a young Jimmy Carter got married to Rosalynn Carter in July 1946.
Final Thoughts
Plains, Georgia was much smaller than I’d expected, so it’s strange to think that such a small town could produce a president.
It’s certainly worth visiting the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site to learn more about the 39th president. We also appreciated that with most of the sights being outdoors, it’s a fairly pet-friendly place to visit.
We visited Plains a few years ago and enjoyed seeing “Carter Country”. His childhood farm reminded me of my grandmother’s farm in rural Georgia. It was amazing to picture someone coming from such a modest background growing up to be president. But, if you read his autobiography and learn about his parents–especially his mother, you can see how he became such an extraordinary man.
When we were in the store in Plains, we kind of picked up a buzz like something was going on. We hung around a while to see Jimmy Carter and Rosalyn who came over for a book event upstairs in the store. They stopped and shook hands and had a brief conversation with us and other folks gathered in the store and let us take photos. It was an unplanned event for us and a treasured memory.
Oh wow, I’m super-jealous that you got to meet both of them!