Laurel Hill Plantation was a nearly 400-acre rice plantation in South Carolina on the Little Back River, a channel of the Savannah River, and its home site stood on this grassy knoll framed by three massive live oak trees before the Civil War. It was one of ten former South Carolina rice plantations included within the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge and had several owners during rice cultivation in the Savannah area from 1750 to 1860, the most prominent being Daniel Heyward, nephew of Thomas Heyward Jr., a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and of Nathaniel Heyward, a major rice planter who once owned ten South Carolina plantations and 2,000 slaves. Rice was grown in fields flooded with fresh water from the river, and in 1825 the plantation had a house, rice mill, winnowing house, barns, and dwellings for 150 slaves. The two-story clapboard house facing the three live oaks on the knoll probably served as the plantation overseers' home. A tidal-powered rice mill once stood on the Little Back River, later replaced near this location by a steam-powered mill that operated from 1833 until 1880. Afterward the mill was converted into the Rice Mill Tavern, long rumored to be a center of drunken and disorderly activity, and it was abandoned by 1934, when the Laurel Hill tract was added to the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge.