How was the landscape partitioned?

About 200 feet north of this location, a fence marked the edge of the curtilage, a sixty-one acre area that separated the house and designed landscape from the larger plantation. In 1813, Jefferson wrote that he had enclosed and divided it into suitable appendages to a dwelling house and had begun its improvement by planting trees of use and ornament. Four roads linked the main house with the outside world, while internal roads, including one that encircled the house and core landscape, carried people and goods within the plantation. A portion of the curtilage fence has been recreated along the front entrance drive as a traditional Virginia, or snake, fence of hand-split Black Locust rails stacked loosely in a zig-zag pattern, with bottom rails resting on fieldstones to prevent rotting from contact with the ground. Archaeologists discovered a series of planting holes that likely define the inner and outer edges of a segment of Jefferson's circular road, which he described as 540 yards in circumference. The pattern of planting holes is nearly identical to Jefferson's plan to line both sides of the road with Paper Mulberry trees planted 20 feet apart.

Forest, Virginia · United States