Qualla: Orton Plantation

Orton Plantation: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NatalieK, CC BY-SA 3.0. Frank Capra Jr. came looking for a movie location in 1983 and found something better -- a plantation so photogenic that it launched an entire film industry. When he chose Orton Plantation for scenes in Firestarter, then persuaded Dino De Laurentiis to open a studio in nearby Wilmington, he set off a chain reaction that would put this 250-year-old estate in 23 films and 34 television series. But Orton's real story began two and a half centuries earlier, when two Irish-descended brothers carved a rice empire out of the swampy banks of the Cape Fear River -- and the house they built outlasted wars, abandonment, and the fortunes of everyone who owned it.

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Image: NatalieK | CC BY-SA 3.0

Orton Plantation: The Moores of Cape Fear

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AgnosticPreachersKid., CC BY-SA 3.0. Roger Moore arrived in southeastern North Carolina in 1725, joining his brother Colonel Maurice Moore on land they called Orton. Maurice was already a man of considerable influence -- father of a Continental Army general, grandfather of a Supreme Court justice, and patriarch of a...

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Image: AgnosticPreachersKid. | CC BY-SA 3.0

Orton Plantation: Columns, Cannons, and Abandonment

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Dincher, CC BY-SA 3.0. Orton changed hands repeatedly in the decades that followed. Benjamin Smith purchased the estate from the Moore family but lost it at auction. Physician Frederick Jones Hill bought it in 1826, and by 1861 it belonged to Thomas C. Miller. Then the Civil War arrived at Orton's door...

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Image: User:Dincher | CC BY-SA 3.0

Orton Plantation: The Chapel and the Garden Gate

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Jcbridge assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY 3.0. Kenneth MacKenzie Murchison, a former Confederate officer, rescued Orton in 1884, restoring the house and making it his winter residence. When he died in 1904, his daughter Luola and her husband James Sprunt took over and began transforming the grounds. The couple expanded the ho...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Jcbridge assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY 3.0

Orton Plantation: A Family Returns

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jcbridge (Janet Cooper-Bridge)., CC BY 3.0. The Sprunt family held Orton for 126 years, donating land in 1954 to establish the Brunswick Town State Historic Site and publishing a book about the plantation's history in 1958. But in May 2010, the last Sprunt owners sold the estate for 45 million dollars to hedge fund manager...

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Image: Jcbridge (Janet Cooper-Bridge). | CC BY 3.0

Orton Plantation: A Star Turn on Screen

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian, CC BY-SA 2.0. Orton's second career as a film set has been remarkably prolific. After Capra Jr.'s Firestarter shoot in 1983 and the founding of De Laurentiis Entertainment Group in Wilmington, production crews became regular visitors. The plantation's oak-lined driveway, columned facade, and r...

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Image: Brian | CC BY-SA 2.0