American settlers founded the community of the Plains of Dura in Sumter County in the mid-1830s on the Americus-Preston Road. The name of the town was a biblical reference from Daniel 3:1 where Nebuchadnezzer set up a golden idol that the Israelites refused to worship, and according to biblical tradition, were cast into a burning furnace from which they emerged alive and unhurt as a sign of God’s favor. From the Arabic dhurah, the name is probably related to the Latin duras, meaning to endure.

In 1884, the Americus, Lumpkin and Preston Railroad established a line south of the Plains of Dura. The town fathers moved the town to the track the next year, abandoning the original settlement site and shortening the name of the town to Plains by the late 1880s.

With hopes of recovering from the Civil War’s devastation, businessmen constructed a row of wood frame structures on the south side of the track and a depot. Agriculture dominated the town. Cotton remained the cash crop, but a change in the agricultural profile of the region was beginning to take place.

About 1910 or 1911, an unknown Yankee planted a crop of peanuts in the Plains area as an experiment. Threshing machines not being available, his field hands picked the nuts from the plants. At first, no one wanted to buy the product. By 1916 candy manufacturers were regularly coming to Plains to purchase peanuts. Cotton gins took peanuts in as a side business, the same equipment was used to crush cottonseed and peanuts for oil.

In 1916, the first peanut mill in Georgia was built in Coleman, to the west of Plains. By 1920, Americus, 10 miles from Plains, had its own peanut sheller.

There are numerous sites to see in Plains, this tour points out those which demonstrate how one family, the Carters, have been both a bystander to and a shaper of the agricultural history of this small south Georgia town. In about 1850, Wiley Carter, son of James Carter and great-great grandfather to President Jimmy Carter, moved to a farm about eight miles north of present day Plains. At his death in 1864, he had amassed a 2,400-acre cotton estate. In the 1920s, Earl Carter, great grandson of Wiley and father of Jimmy, invested in a variety of related business ventures, including cotton, timberland, peanuts, a grocery and a dry cleaning shop.

In 1928, Earl Carter moved his wife Lillian, son Jimmy and daughter Gloria from Plains to a 360-acre farm in Archery, two and one-half miles outside of Plains. They lived across the road from the long-gone whistle stop of Archery, growing peanuts, cotton and corn to sell and raising vegetables and livestock for their own use.

On the property, Earl operated a commissary for his field hands, bringing surplus goods from the general store he opened in town to sell to the black sharecroppers. His inventory included cured ham and pork, overalls, comforters, snuff, tobacco, flour, sugar, meal, castor oil and homemade syrup, made on-site from sugar cane in his fields.

The old Lebanon Cemetery, with graves dating back to before the Civil War, is the final resting place of Earl and Lillian Carter as well as other Carter family members. The Rhylander house, known to locals as the haunted house, is the only known antebellum structure in the area. Locals believe it to be haunted by Civil War ghosts. From 1956 to 1961, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter rented this now abandoned dwelling.

TOURING PLAINS
THE CARTER RESIDENCE. Today, the Carters live in a ranch house behind a high fence off Woodland Drive. They purchased the 2.4-acre lot in 1960 and built a modest ranch house, the only home they have ever owned. Woodland Drive is closed to the public.

PLAINS DEPOT. The 1888 Plains Depot shipped up to 10,000 bales of cotton a year in the 1920s. It served as campaign headquarters for Governor Jimmy Carter as he campaigned for the White House and is now a museum for the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site.

BUSINESS DISTRICT. To get a view of the historic importance of agriculture in Plains, park and walk around the one-block business district. Jimmy's uncle William Alton "Buddy" Carter, mayor of Plains in the 1920s, sold feed, fertilizer and cotton in the seventh building from the east for sixty years. The circa 1901 bank building, fifth from the east, served as a post office in the 1920s. Hugh and Jimmy Carter sold burgers and boiled peanuts from the window in the 1930s. Later, Hugh moved the Carter Worm Farm into the building. The sign remains, but the mail order fish bait company has closed. Earl Carter rented a portion of the third building from the east, formerly the Wise Sanitarium No. 1, when he began his peanut warehouse business in 1934. In this office, Jimmy managed the family business after his father's death in 1953. A billboard for Carter covering the second story windows went up during his gubernatorial campaign. The sign, which remains today, was repainted when he sought and won the presidency. From the circa 1902 storefront on the southwest corner of Hudson and Main, Earl Carter ran a general goods store and meat market. In the Depression, he closed it and moved most of his stock to his store on the farm in Archery. The building stored cotton in the 1950s and houses a barber shop in the back where Jimmy Carter has his hair cut.

GOLDEN PEANUT COMPLEX OF ABOUT ELEVEN BUILDINGS, the most prominent feature in the Plains skyline, once housed the Carter Peanut Warehouse Company, started by Jimmy's father Earl. The first year after the future president took over his late father's struggling wholesale peanut business, it cleared $187. Within two years, his fortunes improved and Carter built two of the large warehouses here.

BILLY CARTER SERVICE STATION once dispensed gas, beer and earthy humor from Jimmy's brother.

PLAINS HIGH SCHOOL, where Jimmy graduated as Salutatorian in 1941 and Rosalynn Smith was valedictorian in 1944, is now the visitor center for the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site.

PLAINS PUBLIC HOUSING. Built in 1953, the Plains Public Housing Unit 9-A was the home of the Carters when Jimmy resigned from the navy and returned home to run his late father's agricultural interests.

LILLIAN CARTER NURSING CENTER, once the Wise Sanitorium No. 2, was the birthplace of Jimmy Carter, the first U.S. President born in a hospital.

MARANATHA BAPTIST CHURCH. The Carters are active members of the Maranatha Baptist Church.  

Tagged with: People in Georgia Plains and Archery City Tours