Where will Jimmy Carter be buried? A look at the small town where he will be interred

WASHINGTON - Former President Jimmy Carter will be buried in the small town where he lived, married, and died: Plains, Georgia. Carter spent more than 80 of his 100 years in and around the town, which still has fewer than 700 people, not much more than when he was born on Oct. 1, 1924.

Unlike other modern presidents—Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton—who also grew up in small-town settings, Jimmy Carter is notable for returning to and remaining in his birthplace throughout his lengthy post-presidency.

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Where will Jimmy Carter be buried?

Before his arrival in Washington, D.C. for his state funeral, Carter was remembered in Plains. A procession drove through the city’s downtown, which spans just a few blocks, passing near the girlhood home of first lady Rosalynn Smith Carter, who died in November 2023 at the age of 96. The motorcade also passed near where the couple operated the family peanut warehouses. The route included the old train depot that served as Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign headquarters and the gas station once run by Carter’s younger brother Billy.

The ceremonial procession passed by the Methodist church where the Carters married in 1946 and the home where they lived and died. The Carters built the one-story house before his first state Senate campaign in 1962 and lived out their lives there, except for four years in the Governor’s Mansion and four more in the White House.

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After going through Plains, the procession stopped in front of Carter’s family farm and boyhood home in Archery, just outside the town, after passing the cemetery where the former president’s parents, James Earl Carter Sr. and Lillian Carter, are buried. The farm is now part of the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park. The National Park Service rang the old farm bell 39 times to honor the 39th president.

Carter’s remains lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda in the nation’s capital from Tuesday until his funeral on Thursday at the Washington National Cathedral. Despite his military service, Carter will not be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Only two presidents, John F. Kennedy and William Howard Taft, are interred at Arlington. The Carter family will then return to bury its patriarch in Plains after a private hometown funeral at Maranatha Baptist Church, where Carter, a devout evangelical, taught Sunday School for decades. Carter will be buried alongside Rosalynn in a private graveside service, in a plot visible from the front porch of his home.