Land of Eden (William Byrd Estate)
Eden, Rockingham County, North Carolina
Marker Inscription
'Land Of Eden'. Near here ran southern line of estate of Wm. Byrd, Virginia planter, author, and surveyor of Va.-N.C. boundary line, 1728.
Erected by North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
The Story
In 1728 William Byrd II, a Virginia planter, author, and surveyor, helped map the disputed boundary between Virginia and North Carolina. Taken with the fertile country he crossed, Byrd acquired a vast tract near here and named it the 'Land of Eden.' His witty account of the expedition became one of colonial America's most famous pieces of writing.
Why it matters
The Virginia–North Carolina survey fixed a border that endures today and helped open the Piedmont backcountry to a wave of settlement.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early eighteenth century, the border between Virginia and North Carolina was a genuine mystery—an unmarked line running west through forest, swamp, and Piedmont wilderness. The two colonies had long disputed exactly where one ended and the other began, and the uncertainty bred quarrels over land titles, taxes, and jurisdiction.
This was still very much frontier country. Beyond the settled coastal regions lay a vast interior of dense woods, river valleys, and Native homelands, only lightly known to colonial officials in their capitals. Drawing a boundary through it meant sending men to survey ground that few colonists had ever crossed.
The men who undertook such work belonged to the colonial gentry—planters and officials for whom land was the great engine of wealth and status. Running a boundary line was partly a public duty and partly a private opportunity, for those who walked the new country first were best placed to claim its most promising tracts.
People & events
William Byrd II embodied that world. A Virginia planter, author, and man of affairs, he was appointed one of the commissioners to survey the disputed Virginia–North Carolina boundary line in 1728. The expedition pushed westward through difficult terrain, fixing the border that had eluded the two colonies for so long.
Byrd was taken with the fertile country he crossed. Near here he acquired a vast tract of land and gave it a name that captured his enthusiasm: the "Land of Eden." The label speaks volumes about how a well-placed colonial planter saw the backcountry—not as wilderness to be endured but as paradise to be possessed and improved.
Byrd's other legacy from the journey was literary. His witty, sharply observed account of the surveying expedition became one of colonial America's most famous pieces of writing, prized for its humor and its vivid picture of frontier life. He was, in a rare combination, both a maker of the boundary and its most memorable chronicler.
Its place in the American story
The 1728 survey did more than settle a colonial squabble. It fixed a border that has endured for centuries—the line between Virginia and North Carolina that still appears on every map today. Boundaries drawn in the frontier era have a way of outlasting the disputes that produced them, quietly shaping states, counties, and communities for generations.
The expedition also belongs to a larger American story: the surveying and claiming of the interior. Running lines through the backcountry was one of the first steps by which colonial society reached inland, converting unknown territory into mapped, titled, and settled land. Byrd's acquisition of his "Land of Eden" was a small early instance of a process that would define the continent's history for the next century and more.
And in his written account, Byrd gave later Americans something rarer than a boundary: a lively firsthand window into what the eastern frontier actually looked and felt like in the 1720s, from the character of the land to the people who lived along the disputed line.
If you visit
This is a landmark marker, so the reward here is more imaginative than visual—you're standing near the southern edge of a tract a colonial planter once called paradise. Look out at the surrounding Piedmont country and try to see it as Byrd did three centuries ago: fertile, promising, and largely unmapped.
The town of Eden carries the name Byrd bestowed, a living echo of that 1728 enthusiasm, and the region's rivers and rolling land still hint at why he found it so appealing. Let the marker send you exploring the countryside nearby with his "Land of Eden" in mind.
For travelers who enjoy pairing places with books, consider seeking out Byrd's own account of the boundary survey afterward—it turns this quiet roadside stop into the opening scene of a genuinely entertaining piece of early American writing, and makes the landscape around you read like a page from it.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · William Byrd II
Related events
- · Virginia–North Carolina boundary survey, 1728
Themes & tags
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