even known to have ever visited it. Today Bacon's Castle is an historic house museum and historic site open for guest visitation. Bacon's Castle is an official Preservation Virginia historic site and operates under its 501 (c)(3) not-for-profit status. Chippokes Chippokes Plantation was established in 1617 by Captain William Powell of the Jamestown Settlement in the Virginia Colony. In 1967, the 1,700-acre (6.9 km2) plantation was donated to the Commonwealth of Virginia by Mrs. Victor Stewart for use as Chippokes State Park. One of the oldest working farms in the nation, Chippokes has kept its boundaries since the 17th century. The structures and artifacts on the property reflect plantation life from the early 17th century to the present. The antebellum Chippokes Mansion and the Chippokes Farm & Forestry Museum both offer scenic tours of the estate, cultivated formal gardens and woodlands. Rich Neck Farm Constructed in the early nineteenth century, the house was remarkable for the number of original accessory features that survived into the 21st century. Placed on the National Register of Historic Places, May 19, 1980, Rich Neck provided a vivid impression of life on a prosperous Southside plantation in the early nineteenth century. Long connected with the Ruffins, one of the prominent families of Southside Virginia, Rich Neck possessed a collection of buildings which were among the best preserved and most noteworthy of their type in the region. Situated behind the house were a nineteenth-century smokehouse, an early and mid-nineteenth-century office; and an outhouse, well house and chicken house, all built in the twentieth century. Original sashes, most of the doors, hinges (many with their leather washers), locks, and other hardware remained. The Ruffin family figured in Virginia's social and intellectual history throughout the colonial and early national periods. Its most notable member was Edmund Ruffin, an ardent secessionist and agricultural pioneer. Research indicates Rich Neck was owned by the Ruffin family until 1865. The house long stood vacant and in a state of disrepair. In 2011 Preservation Virginia listed Rich Neck Farm as one of the most endangered historic sites in Virginia. The house was destroyed by fire in 2012. Pleasant Point Patented to William Edwards in 1657, Pleasant Point is the ancestral home of the Edwards family in Virginia. The 19th-century home was built between 1724 and 1765 and renovated in the 1830s and 1950s. A Confederate signal station existed on the property during the