Since 1976, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources has managed it as Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation State Historic Site.

The property that would become the Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation was originally named Broadface; in 1806, the land was purchased by William Brailford, who renamed it Broadfield.

"The plantation was built in 1807 as a large rice producer with over seven thousand acres of land and more than 350 West African slaves," mostly from Senegal and Sierre Leone, according to historians Amy Lotson and Patrick Holliday.

[3] With the outbreak of the American Civil War, George Dent and his 15-year-old son James went to serve in the Confederate Army.

After the war, large parts of the land was sold to pay taxes and by the time James Dent took over the property in 1880, the wealth was gone.