Plains High School Museum and Visitor Center

About this museum

Plains, Georgia, is one of those American small towns that carries more historical weight than its size would suggest. It is the hometown of Jimmy Carter, the thirty - ninth President of the United States, and the Plains High School Museum and Visitor Center - operating in the building where Carter and Rosalynn Smith, later Rosalynn Carter, both attended school - serves as the starting point for understanding Plains and the remarkable individuals it produced. The museum covers Carter's life from his Depression - era childhood on a peanut farm through his naval career, his time as Georgia governor, his presidency, and his extraordinary post - presidential decades of humanitarian work through The Carter Center. The building itself is part of the story: a small - town Georgia school of the mid - twentieth century, preserved and interpreted by the National Park Service as part of the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park. The exhibits engage honestly with the full record - Carter's presidency included both significant achievements and significant challenges, and the museum does not shy away from complexity. The surrounding town of Plains offers additional Carter - related sites: his church, the Carter Compound, and the boyhood farm in nearby Archery. The Plains High School Museum and Visitor Center is free to visit and currently open Saturdays from 10AM to 5PM. Located at 300 North Bond Street in Plains, Georgia - a two - hour drive south of Atlanta - it is a meaningful destination for anyone interested in twentieth - century American political history, Southern culture, or the life of one of the most distinctive figures in modern American public life.