The nonprofit Corporation for Jefferson’s Poplar Forest’s mission is to preserve and restore Thomas Jefferson’s retreat so that it can serve the public as an innovative educational catalyst inspiring insight into the past, present, and future.  

Today, Poplar Forest is an opportunity to gain new insight into the very private side of Thomas Jefferson, the man and his ideas— while witnessing the fascinating processes of archaeological discovery and architectural restoration in progress.  In future years as funding becomes available, Poplar Forest’s full potential as an innovative educational catalyst also can be achieved.

The Past

The opportunity to look back in time to Thomas Jefferson as a source of insight must be ensured for future generations.  The Corporation is committed to rescuing the heart of Jefferson’s retreat and restoring it to the way Thomas Jefferson knew it.

At this secluded retreat, future generations will have the opportunity to discover Jefferson, the private man, on a personal scale.  In that experience lies the opportunity to understand his ideas, his complexities, and how he re-energized his own creativity.  However, it is the Corporation’s intention that those who encounter Poplar Forest take away with them not only deeper understanding about an individual who significantly affected the past and whose story gives us perspective on where we have come from.  The Corporation also intends that people take with them ideas that can inspire change in their own lives.

The Future

Jefferson said, “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”  The Corporation is committed to stimulating an understanding of Jefferson’s questing approach to life— his excitement about the frontiers of the present and the challenges to shape the future.

In this place where Jefferson came to indulge in the life of the mind and renew his personal creativity, the Corporation’s educational purpose is to inspire the individual to live a life of curiosity and creativity, as Jefferson did.  That creativity may lie in shaping one’s personal surroundings as Jefferson did here, or in tackling today’s challenges for bettering the world as Jefferson did in arenas such as education, science, agriculture, and so many others.

Poplar Forest’s unique contribution lies in its unparalleled personal scale, its contemplative character, and the immediacy of its message for the life of the mind.  It can stimulate reflection and learning through providing high-quality experiences for smaller numbers of people onsite and through radiating ideas to greater numbers via technology