In 1943, Congress approved establishing the George Washington Carver National Monument on
the same farm near Diamond, Mo., where Carver had been born 78 years earlier. It was
the first national monument dedicated to an American for services in agriculture, the first
for an African American, the first for an American educator or scientist. And it remains
open to the public. In addition to an excellent museum and discovery center, which stand on
210 acres of the former farm, a portion of the log cabin remains where Carver was born. A
3/4-mile trail funnels visitors — about 60,000 each year — past the primitive log cabin,
the frame house where farm owners Moses and Susan Carver lived, the family cemetery and a
140-acre restored tall grass prairie. Exhibits chronicle the life of the man who was dubbed
“plant doctor” before he was a teenager, and who spent 47 years as professor of botany at
Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
Located east of Joplin, Missouri, off Interstate 44 (take
Exit 18), the monument is open daily, from 9 am-5 pm. For more information, call (417)
325-4151, or go to nps.gov/gwca.
