Plum Orchard
Georgia
Plum Orchard Mansion on the Cumberland Island National Seashore, Georgia.
Credit: National Park Service
Cumberland Island National Seashore was established as a unit of the National Park Service in 1972, due in large part to the generosity of existing landowners who wanted to save the special character of the island from development and preserve its natural and historic qualities. In 1982, a large portion of the island was designated as a wilderness area to further quell private development efforts. However, within the wilderness boundary were 25 significant historic resources, including Plum Orchard Mansion, Georgia's largest historic house. Access restrictions imposed by the wilderness designation made it extremely difficult for the Park Service to maintain the property or propose it for any kind of adaptive use. As a result, by the 1990s, several significant historic resources had collapsed and were lost.
The National Trust advocated for the protection of historic resources on Cumberland Island as a signatory to a 1998 memorandum of agreement and active participant on the National Seashore Committee. However, none of these efforts cured the conflicts created by the wilderness designation and, in 2001, the National Trust called for a change in the wilderness boundary. Under the leadership of Representative Jack Kingston, Congress amended the boundary in 2005, removing the 200-year old, National Register listed, "Grand Avenue," from the wilderness area so that visitors could again enjoy easy access to the Plum Orchard and High Point Historic Districts.
