Oatlands is a self-supporting, co-stewardship property of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Situated on 260 acres, the plantation features an Antebellum mansion, numerous 19th century brick dependencies, a 4-acre formal terraced garden, and the 2nd oldest greenhouse in the Nation.

It was 1804 when George Carter, great grandson of colonial Virginia's renowned Robert "King" Carter, began building his Oatlands estate: the mansion, greenhouse, dairy, smoke house, bank barn and gardens. In the 1820s, he remodeled his federal mansion to its current Greek Revival style. Carter died in 1846, and his widow, Elizabeth Grayson Carter, remained at Oatlands with their two sons and managed the property through the Civil War years. In the War's aftermath, beset with debt and the loss of their slave labor, the Carters operated Oatlands as a summer boarding house. They sold the property in 1897 to Stilson Hutchins, a cofounder of the Washington Post. Hutchins, however, did not reside at Oatlands, and the mansion sat empty for six years.