Factors Walk & The Pirates' House: Cobblestones and Smugglers

Why is it significant?

Step onto the ballast stone paving of Factors Walk and walk toward the weathered timbers of The Pirates' House near the Savannah River bluff. Built in seventeen fifty-three as an inn for seafarers and visiting merchants, this is recognized as the oldest standing structure in Georgia.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Step onto the ballast stone paving of Factors Walk and walk toward the weathered timbers of The Pirates' House near the Savannah River bluff. Built in seventeen fifty-three as an inn for seafarers and visiting merchants, this is recognized as the oldest standing structure in Georgia.

The cobblestones under your feet arrived as ballast in the hulls of sailing ships from Europe. The river bluff's network of iron bridges and cotton factors' offices was where brokers, known as factors, graded millions of pounds of Sea Island cotton that drove the nineteenth-century world textile market.

Down in the tavern cellar of The Pirates' House, legendary tunnels led straight out to the river docks. Unwitting sailors were frequently drugged with rum, dropped through trapdoors, and shanghaied onto outbound merchant clippers. Robert Louis Stevenson mentioned this inn in Treasure Island, noting that Captain Flint drew his last breath in an upstairs room.

Look out toward the muddy Savannah River as the evening fog rolls in over three centuries of romance and southern gothic mystery.