Qualla: Jimmy Carter National Historical Park

Jimmy Carter National Historical Park: Introduction

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bubba73 (talk), Jud McCranie, CC BY-SA 3.0. Plains, Georgia, has a population of about 600 people, and one of them was the 39th President of the United States. Jimmy Carter was born here in 1924, grew up on a farm three miles outside town where he sold boiled peanuts on the street for a dollar a day, left for the Naval Academy, and then came back. He always came back. After the White House, after the Nobel Peace Prize, after decades of global diplomacy, Carter returned to the same house at 209 Woodland Drive where he and Rosalynn had lived since 1961. The Jimmy Carter National Historical Park preserves the places that shaped this unlikely trajectory: the boyhood farm, the high school, the train depot that became his 1976 campaign headquarters, and now the gravesite where he and Rosalynn rest together.

Image: Bubba73 (talk), Jud McCranie | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jimmy Carter National Historical Park: A Farm Before Electricity

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dsdugan, CC0. The Carter boyhood farm sits in Archery, about three miles from Plains. Earl and Lillian Carter raised their family on 360 acres where peanuts, cotton, corn, and sugarcane grew in the deep south Georgia soil. The house had no running water until Jimmy was 11 years old, and electr...

Image: Dsdugan | CC0

Jimmy Carter National Historical Park: The Train Depot That Changed Everything

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dsdugan, CC0. In the center of Plains stands a small railroad depot that in 1976 became the most improbable campaign headquarters in presidential history. Carter, a peanut farmer and one-term Georgia governor, ran for president from this building at a time when almost nobody outside the state ...

Image: Dsdugan | CC0

Jimmy Carter National Historical Park: The School They Shared

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dsdugan, CC0. Plains High School opened in 1921 and closed in 1979, and in between, both Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter walked its halls. The building now serves as the park's museum and visitor center, with a restored classroom, principal's office, and auditorium that look as they did when Carter ...

Image: Dsdugan | CC0

Jimmy Carter National Historical Park: Coming Home to Woodland Drive

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dsdugan, CC0. After leaving Washington in 1981, the Carters returned to Plains and to the house at 209 Woodland Drive, which had served as Carter's Summer White House during his presidency. From here, Carter and Rosalynn built the Carter Center in Atlanta, championing human rights, disease era...

Image: Dsdugan | CC0