{"id":802,"date":"2017-05-10T20:26:30","date_gmt":"2017-05-10T18:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.travelspotting.de\/?p=802"},"modified":"2019-06-02T17:13:31","modified_gmt":"2019-06-02T15:13:31","slug":"schoenheiten-des-suedens-plantagen-der-amerikanischen-suedstaaten-und-ihre-geschichte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.travelspotting.de\/en\/southern-beauties-plantations-in-the-american-south-and-thier-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Southern Beauties: Plantations in the American South and Their History"},"content":{"rendered":"A tour in the South of the US would not be complete without visiting a Southern Plantation. Some plantations are well-know because of appearances in movies and on televisions, others are totally unknown. Size, purpose and architecture vary greatly. A few plantations are described here but there are many more.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Boone Hall Plantation, Mount Pleasant, Charleston, South Carolina<\/h2>\n

The Boone Hall Plantation is a little outside Charleston (18 km) and is one of the largest plantations on the list. The plantation appeared prominently on the TV show \u201cNorth against South\u201d. Of all the plantations we saw, this one had the largest crowd of visitors.
\nMany signs point to the plantation, from Charleston, Boone Hall is easy to find. The cashier is right in front of the Oak Alley. After buying a ticket, visitors proceed right through the Oak Alley in their cars. The street is an unpaved dirt road (a paved road would destroy the atmosphere) but the road is even, stable and dry. Driving on it works well, even larger vehicles like RVs could drive there without any problems. Traffic was heavy on the Oak Alley, the parking lot follows right after the Oak Alley.<\/p>\n

Main attraction is the mansion with its regular tours. There are many chairs in front of the mansion, also canopies that offer shade if you need to wait and the sun is too strong. The plantation dates back till 1681; anyways the mansion is a replica from the 1930s. Originally, Boone Hall was a cotton plantation. Nowadays, farming focuses on strawberries and tomatoes.<\/p>\n

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The mansion tour mostly has stories about the original farm owners (in this case a Boone family), when the plantation was sold, what these new owners did about the plantation and how the plantation finally became accessible to public. Because of the many visitors, the tour is a bit of a run through all the rooms, tour guides figuratively push their groups to the next room. Once you leave a room, the next group walks right in. You get to see many different rooms of the plantation. Photography inside the mansion is not allowed. That is why I cannot show you any pics. Just in case you want to know how it looks inside the mansion: exactly like in \u201cNorth against South\u201d. It feels like being on the movie set.<\/p>\n

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In front of the mansion, there are several smaller red-brick buildings, where some of the slaves lived. It was an exception to build these cabins in front of the mansion; usually they were hidden behind the mansion. There is also a tour through these cabins; anyways it\u2019s much less visited than the mansion tour. I would definitely recommend to do the slave cabin tour. The slaves\u2019 history needs to be told and heard, it\u2019s definitely as interesting as the mansion itself. A common problem here is that there is no written record about their history. Reconstructing their history and life story was only possible for a few single people, for example, the story of a female cook who spent her entire life at Boone Hall.<\/p>\n

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The third part of the plantation is its huge garden that can be seen on a walking tour. It has the typical face of a southern garden: many old trees, Spanish Moss everywhere and swamp areas nearby. You should definitely take that walking tour in order to feel the atmosphere of the plantation properly.<\/p>\n

On plantations website it says they also have a bus tour through the entire land of the plantation, almost 300 hectares of land. When we were there, the busses were not. That is why we could not do that tour but we did everything else. The caf\u00e9 was closed as well.<\/p>\n