Protected Ground That Keeps American History, From a James River Plantation to a Potomac Island

Chippokes State Park sits on the south side of the James River in Surry County, Virginia, along the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail. Established in 1967, it keeps three preserved historic houses and an open air agricultural and forestry museum beside its forests and fossil hunting beach, so the story starts with farming on the James.

George Washington Birthplace National Monument preserves the Westmoreland County, Virginia, site where Washington was born on February 22, 1732. Congress established it on January 23, 1930, and it now holds about 662 acres of Tidewater farmland with a reconstructed colonial era farm and a family burial ground.

Charles Pinckney National Historic Site at Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, keeps part of Snee Farm, the plantation of a founder who helped draft the United States Constitution. It became a National Historic Site of about 28 acres in 1988, after earlier recognition as a National Historic Landmark in 1973.

Red Hill Patrick Henry National Memorial in Charlotte County, Virginia, is the last home and burial place of Patrick Henry, who bought the plantation in 1794 and lived there until his death in 1799. Designated a national memorial in 1986, it is run by the Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation as a house museum affiliated with the National Park Service.

Blennerhassett Island Historical State Park occupies an island in the Ohio River in West Virginia, where Harman and Margaret Blennerhassett built a Palladian style mansion in 1799. The island is tied to an alleged plot involving Aaron Burr, the mansion burned in 1811, and a detailed replica was built in the 1980s.

Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site in Brazoria County, Texas, is built around a log cabin dating to 1824 that was later rebuilt in the Greek Revival style. It preserves the home of Texas governor James S. Hogg and his family, and the Texas Historical Commission operates the roughly 66 acre site.

Rose Hill Plantation State Historic Site in Union County, South Carolina, protects a Greek Revival mansion built in 1832 for William H. Gist, who helped instigate the state Secession Convention of 1860. South Carolina has run it as a historic house museum since 1960, interpreting his part in the road to the Civil War.

Booker T. Washington National Monument in Franklin County, Virginia, preserves part of the tobacco farm where Washington was born into slavery on April 5, 1856. Designated a national monument in 1956, its reconstructed buildings, gardens and farm animals interpret 1850s slavery and farming.

Redcliffe Plantation State Historic Site near Beech Island, South Carolina, keeps a Greek Revival mansion completed in 1859 that housed four generations of the Hammond family. Two cabins from about 1857 interpret the lives of the roughly 300 people the Hammonds enslaved, and the site takes part in the Reconstruction Era National Historic Network.

Leesylvania State Park in Prince William County, Virginia, joins Potomac riverfront recreation to its history. It includes the Freestone Point Confederate battery and the Leesylvania archeological site, both on the National Register of Historic Places, and the park is classed under IUCN protected landscape category V.

Theodore Roosevelt Island is an 88.5 acre island in the Potomac River at Washington, D.C. During the Civil War it served as a training camp for United States Colored Troops, and in 1932 the Theodore Roosevelt Association gave it to the federal government as a memorial to the twenty sixth president.

Malabar Farm State Park in Richland County, Ohio, grew from a farm established in 1939 by Pulitzer Prize winning author Louis Bromfield to demonstrate sustainable and contour farming. Ohio took the site over as a state park in 1976, and its farmhouse and working land are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.