Lameshur Plantation Ruins

Lameshur Plantation is a small group of stone and plaster estate ruins behind Little Lameshur Bay. You see pieces of a working plantation landscape, not one intact sugar mill or a furnished house. If you are already taking the south-shore drive, this is a worthwhile short history stop. A 0.3-mile trail between Great and Little Lameshur Bays passes stone ruins along the way.

One clear industrial trace is a roughly 60-foot circular horsemill platform, with fragments of its retaining wall and a surviving section of the cane-juice gutter. The sugar factory stood just 17 feet to its south. Another distinctive structure is a bay-oil still with two round pots and a 14-foot chimney. Some nearby ruins have lost their original purpose, so take the site as a collection of pieces rather than a fully legible mill.

Cultivation here goes back to the early 1700s. The historical record describes basic sugar-making equipment by 1780, then calls the estate a cotton plantation in 1789. Later uses included sugar cane, cattle, and, around 1900, bay and lime oil. After Ingjald C. Mourier acquired the consolidated estate in 1832 and developed it for cane, the enslaved population grew from 22 to about 66. By 1847, only 24 of the estate's 235 acres were planted in cane. That changing story is why not every surviving wall can be assigned to one clear stage.