Year Erected: 1957

Marker Text: During Franklin D. Roosevelt’s initial visits to Meriwether County in the 1920s, he observed damage to local trees. Georgia’s pines were severely impacted by nineteenth-century logging and burning, and few trees had been replaced. In 1929, Roosevelt devoted a portion of his Warm Springs farm south of this location to planting 5,600 longleaf pine seedlings. As a hobbyist forester, he experimented with farming techniques such as erosion control, crop rotation, and watershed control to study sustainable reforestation on his land. Only half of the planted area of longleaf pines remains after a tornado in 1954.