Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site (Connemara)

The main house at Connemara was completed in 1839, built in the Greek Revival style by an architect Memminger hired — Christopher Memminger, Charleston lawyer and future Confederate Treasury Secretary, who called the estate Rock Hill and used it to escape the lowland summer heat. After Memminger's death, his son sold it to Colonel William Gregg, Jr., who eventually sold it to Captain Ellison Adger Smyth. Smyth renamed it Connemara, after his ancestral district in Ireland, winterized the house, enclosed the porch as a dining room, and installed an eight-hole golf course in the pastures.

Carl Sandburg paid $45,000 for it in 1945. His wife Lilian had been looking for a farm in a warmer climate to raise her Chikaming dairy goats — she needed more than thirty acres of pastureland. More than 42,000 pounds of personal belongings came by train from Michigan, most of it books. Contractors worked on the heating, plumbing, electrical, roof, and basement floor. New chimneys, bathrooms, and dozens of bookshelves went in. The remodeling took two and a half years.

Sandburg lived here until his death in 1967, publishing more than a third of his works at this address. The NPS designated the site the first national park unit to honor a poet. The working goat dairy still operates — the government has designated the herd historic, representing the three breeds Lilian raised. The 264-acre site holds the residence, the barn, rolling pastures, mountainside woods, five miles of hiking trails, two small lakes, flower and vegetable gardens, and an apple orchard. From mid-June through mid-August, live performances run at the park amphitheater. The park also runs a writer-in-residence program, offering emerging writers three weeks to live and work on the grounds each April.