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How Low Is the Bar For National Park System Inclusion When You Add a Gas Station?

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By Kurt Repanshek - June 1st, 2009

Billy Carter's service station, circa 1979. University of Georgia photo.

Is this how low the bar has dropped for inclusion into the National Park System? Is it really so low that a gas station once owned by the beer-swilling brother of President Jimmy Carter should be managed as part of a national historical park by the National Park Service?

Sure, sure, sure, President Carter was the only Georgian to reach the White House as resident, and Billy Carter certainly attracted more than his share of notoriety -- Billy Beer, anyone? But why oh why would anyone want to include Billy's gas station at 216 West Church Street in the heart of downtown Plains, Georgia (Pop. 635) in a national historical park honoring President Carter?

Oh, that's right. While the NPS currently oversees the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site, pending legislation introduced by U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Ga., and U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., would transform the "historic site" into a national "historical park." By comparison, Valley Forge is also a national historical park, one without an official gas station to the best of my recollection.

But then, perhaps a gas station does fit well with this site. Already it includes President Carter's boyhood farm, where you can still pick peanuts; his old high school, which is now the historic site's visitor center, and; the old Plains Train Depot that the former president utilized as campaign headquarters in 1976.

The pending legislation also calls for a house, once considered to be haunted, that Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter lived in after he was discharged from the Navy, and the state of Georgia's Visitor Information Center on the edge of town, to be added to the proposed historical park.

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