The Forks of Cypress plantation was established in 1818 by James and Sarah Jackson, and its house, believed to have been designed by William Nichols, became one of Alabama's great houses, perhaps featuring the earliest peristyle colonnades in America. Built by skilled African-American artisans in slavery, the house stood until June 6, 1966, when lightning struck it and it burned to the ground, leaving its surrounding brick porch with twenty-three columns and cypress Ionic capitals on limestone foundations. James Jackson, an Irish-born engineer, turfman, merchant, financier, planter, statesman, member of the Cypress Land Company, founding father of Florence, and major figure in establishing the local textile industry, also advocated the 1832 Treaty of Cusetta as president of the Alabama Senate. His most enduring contribution was to thoroughbred breeding: to improve American bloodstock, he imported fine English horses including Leviathan, Gallopade, and Glencoe, and horses bred at the Forks included Peytona, which in 1843 won the Peyton Stakes and the Race Between the North and South after walking 1,200 miles to Long Island, and Reel, the leading American broodmare of the 19th century; through Glencoe and his descendants, by the mid-20th century virtually no thoroughbred in the world lacked descent from Glencoe of the Forks of Cypress.