Fifteen minutes from downtown Savannah, a dirt road turns off Skidaway Road and runs a mile and a half under more than four hundred live oaks. Their limbs meet overhead the whole way, hung with Spanish moss, and the light comes down through the canopy in pieces. There is no prettier road in Georgia.
The trees stand about twenty feet apart, planted in matched rows on both sides, and the tunnel they make runs unbroken from the entrance gate to the far end of the property. A shuttle leaves the visitor center about every half hour and rolls the full length of the avenue — a twenty-minute ride under the oaks, with the marsh opening up beyond them.
The road ends at a colonial ruin
Past the last of the oaks, a walking trail leads to the tabby walls of a fortified house from the 1740s — oyster-shell concrete, eight feet high, open to the sky — and on along the marsh to the family cemetery. The walls are held to be the oldest structure standing in the Savannah area. On the way back there is a museum, an orientation film, and a patio that looks out over the water.
The estate has belonged to the same family since 1736. Nine generations later, descendants of the first owner still live in the house at the end of the drive — the avenue every visitor rides down is also, still, somebody’s driveway.
A visit runs about two hours
Wormsloe Historic Site is at 7601 Skidaway Road, Savannah, open daily 9:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. except Thanksgiving and Christmas. Admission is $12 for adults, $9 for seniors, $5.75 for ages six to seventeen, $3.25 under six, plus tax. Two hours covers the ride, the ruin, and the trail without hurrying. Go early — the light through the canopy is the whole show.
