For over 2,000 years, the Mattaponi, the Piscataway, and the Choptank shared this area and hunted and fished in the Rhode River area, and a reconstructed Piscataway campsite represents how these Native American cousins may have lived. From the mid-1600s through the Civil War, tobacco was the main crop grown here, and plantations developed along rivers and creeks for easy shipment, with life on a tobacco plantation shown from the viewpoints of both owner and African American slave through exhibits centered on Java Plantation. Robert L. Forrest operated a dairy on this land from 1915 to the mid-1940s, and many of the changes he made remain visible in the landscape; his dairy operations, the impact of grazing cattle on the land, and the way nature reclaims abandoned land are part of this history. After Forrest died in 1962, he donated this land to the Smithsonian Institution. Its location on the Rhode River and near the Chesapeake Bay now allows SERC scientist to conduct long-term research in a variety of ecosystems on air, land, and water, and a raised walkway crosses Fox Creek marsh with information on the plants and animals living in a tidal marsh.