The looming 1980 presidential election was all over the news, the unpopular incumbent Jimmy Carter facing the charismatic former actor and California Gov. Ronald Reagan.  A college junior in Boone walked into the Watauga County Board of Elections sometime in September and registered to vote in his first presidential election.

“Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.” 

— David McCullough Jr. 

There, in Sumter County, Georgia, not far from the Alabama line lies the tiny town of Plains (pop. 784), a most unremarkable place home to a most remarkable man. 

Home for President Jimmy Carter has always been the clay roads and cotton fields of Plains, except when he was at Annapolis, in the Navy, or serving as state senator or governor or president.