Travel: The Antebellum Plantation Homes at Stone Mountain Park, Georgia

For a real taste of the South, whether Gone With the Wind fan or not, tourists must not miss the antebellum plantation and farm grounds at the historic Stone Mountain Park here in Atlanta. Just before Christmas, my family and I went to enjoy the winter lights festival there. We had a picnic, browsed the shops, took the cable car up to top of the big granite rock, rode the Christmas carol sing-a-long train around its base at night, and saw the many historic homes and buildings that have been transplanted to the park from all over the South. Growing up in Atlanta, I visited St. Mountain Park several times every year, for picnics, laser shows, school trips, and special festivals, and the plantations grounds were always my favorite thing to see.

 This is the main house of the grounds. Women enter via the righthand stair and the men use the left.

In the summertime the tour guides and caretakers dress in historic costumes a bit more than they do in winter---I will never forget the size of the hoop skirt and straw hat of one of the guides when I first visited as a little girl. Ten little kids could have been hiding under that skirt!

Gentelmen's parlour in the big house. 

 Ladies parlour in the big house.

 Master bedroom of the big house.

Formal Dining Room at the Big House

Around the main house are all of the building a large plantation home would have required: the 'necessary room', the blacksmith, the kitchen, kitchen gardens, the smokehouse, the stables, and the slave quarters.

Stable grounds of the main house.

Old buggys.

Slave Houses

Interior of a slave cottage. 

One of the smaller ante-bellum homes

Same house, way back when.

Parlour of the smaller home.

'Antebellum' means 'before the war' in Latin, and refers to the large cotton plantations and neo-colonial homes that were no longer sustainable after the war when slavery was abolished, and the entire way of life of the plantations was truly 'Gone With the Wind.' Stone Mountain park is the best place to see what a real plantation would have looked like back then, save for the fields of cotton. 

Has anyone visited Stone Mountain Park before? Did you get a chance to see the plantations? Hope so!

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