
"People have been enjoying ruins as romantic landscape features since at least the Renaissance," notes one preservationist. Some Alabamians see the same potential in the ruins of the Forks of Cypress, pointing to other places in the South where historic ruins have become the focal point of private or public landscaped areas: in Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia, for example. Perhaps the most famous of these ruins is Windsor plantation, on the Mississippi River near Natchez. Stabilizing the ruins of the Forks would preserve for future generations a romantic symbol of the past while safeguarding for those living today a pleasing and unusual landscape feature.