At Wormsloe, on the edge of Savannah, the same family has lived since 1736 and still comes home every evening under the four hundred live oaks that everybody else drives out to see. It is a mile and a half from the gate to their front door.
The tram is free and leaves every half hour
Cars have not been allowed on the avenue for years, because their weight compacts the soil over roots more than a century old. The site runs an open-air tram from the visitor centre instead. It leaves on the hour and the half hour, takes about twenty minutes, and a ranger talks you through the place along the way. It costs nothing beyond admission, and dogs are allowed on board. You can walk the mile and a half instead, or bring a bike.
Go at opening for the light
The sun comes in low along the avenue first thing, before the trams start, so both the light and the road are at their best in the first hour. Live oaks hold their leaves through the winter, which means January looks much like July. Portraits are welcome anywhere on the site, though ceremonies are no longer held here, so anyone planning a wedding photographs at Wormsloe and marries somewhere else.
Admission is twelve dollars for adults
Seniors pay $9, ages six to seventeen $5.75, and under-sixes $3.25, all plus tax. Parking is free and the lot at the visitor centre is a large one. Leashed dogs are welcome on the trails and on the tram, though not inside the buildings. Two hours covers the avenue, the ruin and the trail without hurrying.
The tabby ruin is the oldest standing structure in Savannah
Past the last of the oaks, a walking trail reaches the walls of a fortified house from the 1740s, built of tabby — burnt oyster shell mixed into concrete — standing about eight feet high with the sky open above it. The trail carries on along the marsh to the family cemetery. Back at the visitor centre there is a museum and an orientation film.
Forrest Gump was filmed somewhere else
Almost everybody arrives expecting the road Forrest runs down. That one is Bluff Plantation in Yemassee, South Carolina, with Boone Hall in Mount Pleasant standing in for other scenes, both about two hours up the coast. Wormsloe has its own credits: Roots, The Last Song, and part of The General’s Daughter.
Noble Jones sailed from England in 1733 with Oglethorpe and the first group of settlers, and took this land three years later. Nine generations on, his descendants are still at the end of the drive.
Wormsloe Historic Site
7601 Skidaway Road, Savannah, GA 31406
912-353-3023
Open daily 9:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Closed Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.