MOUNT PLEASANT, SOUTH CAROLINA

There are few places I love exploring more than Charleston, South Carolina. The historic architecture, centuries-old buildings, cobblestone streets, and stories woven into nearly every corner of the city have always fascinated me. Charleston is the kind of place where I can spend hours wandering without a particular destination, simply admiring the buildings and wondering about the people who once lived behind their walls, but some of the area’s most remarkable historic places lie beyond the city itself.

Just across the Cooper River, in Mount Pleasant, sits Boone Hall Plantation, a property with more than three centuries of history and one of the most photographed entrances in the South, and I’ll admit something right from the beginning. I didn’t go to Boone Hall for the mansion. I went for the trees.

The Avenue of Oaks

There is something about an ancient Southern live oak that has always captivated me. Their enormous trunks, twisting branches, and sprawling canopies seem almost impossible, as though they’ve been growing for so long that they’ve forgotten where to stop, and when those branches are draped in Spanish moss, they’re even more beautiful.

Spanish moss-covered oaks are my favorite trees, and Boone Hall has some of the most magnificent examples I’ve ever seen. The moment I turned onto the plantation’s famous Avenue of Oaks, I knew the drive alone had been worth the trip. Massive live oaks lined both sides of the road, their enormous limbs reaching toward one another overhead. Long curtains of Spanish moss hung from the branches, swaying gently in the breeze. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, casting shifting shadows across the narrow road. It was like driving through a living cathedral.

The avenue stretches approximately three-quarters of a mile, and its trees have been growing here for generations. The famous approach is traditionally dated to 1743, when the planting of the oaks began. I found myself slowing down, wanting to take in every detail. The trees were even more impressive in person than they appeared in photographs. Their thick, weathered trunks and enormous branches gave the entire entrance a sense of age that no building could ever replicate, and unlike the buildings, which have been altered, replaced, and restored over the centuries, these trees have remained rooted in the same soil, watching the world around them change.

I couldn’t help wondering how many people had traveled beneath their branches over the years. Plantation owners arriving in carriages. Enslaved workers making their way between the fields and buildings. Generations of families, laborers, and eventually visitors like me. The avenue was breathtaking, but it also served as a reminder that the beauty of a historic place doesn’t always tell the whole story.

More Than Three Centuries of History

Boone Hall’s history reaches back to 1681, when the property was established through a colonial land grant associated with Major John Boone. Over the centuries, the land changed hands numerous times, passing through families whose fortunes were tied to agriculture, commerce, and the labor of enslaved people. The plantation once encompassed a much larger area than the property visitors explore today. Like many plantations in the Charleston Lowcountry, its history was shaped by the wealth generated from crops and other enterprises dependent on slavery.

As I wandered the grounds, I tried to imagine what this place would have looked like centuries ago, before the manicured gardens, tour groups, and modern visitor facilities. The land would have been filled with the sounds of work. Wagons moving along dirt roads. Animals in the fields. People tending crops, cutting timber, making bricks, and carrying out the countless tasks required to keep a plantation operating.

The grand houses that became symbols of the Old South were only one part of a much larger and far more complicated world, and at Boone Hall, some of the most important reminders of that world are still standing.

The Brick Cabins of Slave Street

Along the Avenue of Oaks stands a row of nine historic brick cabins known as Slave Street. These buildings immediately caught my attention. Unlike the grand plantation house, with its impressive columns and carefully maintained appearance, the cabins tell a very different story. They are modest brick structures, standing as reminders of the enslaved men, women, and children whose labor sustained the plantation and helped create wealth for its owners.

Some of the enslaved people who lived in these cabins worked as domestic servants or skilled craftspeople. Others labored elsewhere on the property, including in agricultural fields and brickmaking operations. The surviving cabins do not represent every type of housing enslaved people endured at Boone Hall. Many field workers lived in much more rudimentary structures that have not survived.

Walking past the brick buildings, I found myself studying the doorways, windows, and walls. It’s one thing to read about slavery in a history book. It’s another to stand in front of buildings where enslaved people actually lived. I wondered about the families who occupied those rooms. The conversations that took place inside. The children who grew up there. The lives they built under circumstances they had no freedom to choose.

The cabins now serve as spaces for historical interpretation, helping visitors understand the experiences and contributions of enslaved African Americans. They are an essential part of Boone Hall’s history, and one that deserves as much attention as the mansion or the famous oak-lined entrance.

The Bricks That Helped Build Charleston

One of the most fascinating chapters in Boone Hall’s history involves something I hadn’t given much thought to before visiting. Bricks. In 1817, brothers John and Henry Horlbeck acquired the plantation. Under their ownership, brickmaking became a major enterprise. Near the creek, enslaved workers labored in the plantation’s brickyard, digging clay, shaping bricks by hand, drying them, and firing them in kilns. It was exhausting, physically demanding work.

By the years leading up to the Civil War, the operation had grown into a substantial business, reportedly producing millions of bricks annually. Those bricks helped supply the expanding Charleston area. I found that particularly interesting because Charleston’s historic architecture is one of the reasons I love visiting the city. Its old brick buildings, walls, and streets are part of what gives the place its character, but the beauty of those structures comes with a history that is often overlooked. Behind the finished brickwork were the hands of enslaved laborers who made the materials, frequently without receiving recognition for their skill or contribution.

It made me think differently about the old buildings I admire when wandering through Charleston. History isn’t always found in plaques, monuments, or grand houses. Sometimes it’s in the bricks themselves.

A Mansion From Another Era

Eventually, I made my way toward Boone Hall’s main house. With its imposing columns and stately appearance, the mansion looks exactly like the kind of Southern plantation home people imagine when they picture the antebellum South, but appearances can be deceiving. Despite its historic styling, the house standing at Boone Hall today was constructed in 1935, long after the Civil War.

It replaced earlier residences on the property and was designed to evoke the grandeur of traditional Southern plantation architecture. That distinction matters. While the plantation itself dates to the seventeenth century, the present mansion is not an original antebellum house. The McRae family purchased Boone Hall in 1955, and the property opened to the public the following year. The family furnished the mansion with antiques and developed the plantation into a historic attraction.

I took the house tour, although I have to say I found it somewhat disappointing. Only a limited portion of the interior was accessible during my visit. We were shown the formal dining room, library, and a screened side porch, but much of the house remained off-limits. I would have loved to explore the upstairs bedrooms and kitchen, especially since those rooms often reveal so much about how people lived. Still, the architecture was beautiful, and I enjoyed seeing the interior spaces that were included, but the mansion wasn’t what had brought me there. My thoughts kept returning to the trees outside.

A Familiar Setting on the Big Screen

As I wandered around Boone Hall, I couldn’t help thinking about how familiar parts of the plantation looked. Over the years, this historic property has served as a filming location for several productions, including North and South and one of my all-time favorite movies, The Notebook. In the film, Boone Hall’s beautiful Avenue of Oaks and plantation grounds helped bring the romantic world of Noah and Allie to life, while the mansion served as the exterior of Allie’s family’s summer home. Knowing that scenes from a movie I love had been filmed here made the visit even more special. I could almost picture the characters arriving beneath those enormous oak trees. Of course, the plantation’s real history is far more complicated than the romantic version of the South often portrayed in Hollywood. Still, there was something exciting about standing in a place I had admired on screen, especially when the scenery that captivated me in the movie was even more beautiful in person.

Wandering Through Boone Hall

After the house tour, I spent more time exploring the grounds at my own pace. That’s usually my favorite part of visiting historic properties. I enjoy guided tours and learning from people who know the history, but I also like having time to wander, photograph the surroundings, and notice the smaller details that are easy to miss when moving with a group. Boone Hall offered plenty of opportunities for that.

The gardens, historic buildings, open grounds, and enormous oaks created a landscape that seemed to change with every turn. There were moments when I simply stopped and looked around, imagining how different the property must have been two hundred years earlier. Boone Hall also continues its agricultural traditions, making it more than a preserved historic estate. The land has remained connected to farming through generations of changing ownership and agricultural practices.

There are seasonal events, demonstrations, and other activities that attract visitors throughout the year, but for me, the greatest attraction was the history and the landscape itself. I could have spent the entire afternoon photographing those trees.

The Woman Near the Brickyard

Of course, a place with more than three centuries of history is bound to accumulate a few ghost stories, and Boone Hall has one particularly eerie legend associated with its old brickyard. According to a story told about the plantation, visitors have reported seeing the figure of a woman near the creek and the remains of the brickmaking area. She is said to appear around sunset, standing near the road in dark, ragged clothing. Her head hangs downward, and loose hair obscures her face.

What makes the story especially unsettling is the movement witnesses supposedly describe. The woman repeatedly moves her hands in front of her body, almost as though she is still performing some task she once carried out in life. Some versions of the legend claim that the figure appears translucent in the fading evening light. Because the apparition is said to appear near the former brickyard, the story suggests she may represent the spirit of an enslaved woman who once worked there.

There is no verified historical evidence establishing the identity of such a woman or confirming the reported sightings. It’s a piece of local ghost lore rather than documented history. Still, the legend is an unsettling one. The idea of someone continuing the same repetitive labor long after death is haunting, especially when you consider the real suffering endured by enslaved workers on the property.

Whether the story originated from an unexplained sighting, an old tale, or simply the imagination of someone familiar with the plantation’s history, it has become another layer of folklore attached to Boone Hall, and like so many historic places, the stories people tell about it reveal something about how the past continues to occupy the present.

Beneath the Same Oaks

By the time I finished exploring Boone Hall, I found myself thinking again about the Avenue of Oaks. It was the first thing that captivated me when I arrived, and it remained my favorite part of the visit. There is something extraordinary about standing beneath trees that have survived for centuries. They’ve endured hurricanes, wars, changing ownership, and generations of people passing beneath their branches.

The plantation around them has changed dramatically. Houses have been built and replaced. Fields have been transformed. The lives once lived here have become part of the historical record. Yet the oaks continue to grow. I came to Boone Hall because I wanted to see those magnificent trees, and they were every bit as beautiful as I’d hoped, but I left with more than photographs of Spanish moss and ancient branches.

I left thinking about the people who built this place, the lives that unfolded here, and the history that exists beyond the polished image of a Southern plantation. That’s what draws me to historic places. Not just the architecture or the scenery, although I love both, but the stories waiting beneath the surface.

Boone Hall is undeniably beautiful. It’s also a place where beauty and difficult history exist side by side, and perhaps that’s what makes it worth exploring. Sometimes the most memorable places aren’t the ones with the grandest buildings or the prettiest gardens. Sometimes they’re the places that make you stop, look a little closer, and wonder about everything those old trees have witnessed.