Arlington Plantation in Google Earth

The original Arlington Plantation was built on Old Plantation Creek here on the Eastern Shore by John Custis II, starting around 1670, and was allegedly the most sophisticated house on the Chesapeake...the home that eventually became Arlington Cemetery was named for it. Here are some links to more information on Arlington.

http://www.apva.org/resource/other/arling.html
http://www.esva.net/ghotes/arlington/index.html
http://familiesfound.tripod.com/custis.html


The building is long gone but my friend Harry is active in the Arlington Foundation and showed me some drawing of what they guess it looked like. It was a very interesting design and since I was just learning to use Sketchup I decided to do a model of it and place it in Google Earth. The model isn't finished yet but it's close enough to give you an idea of where it was and what it could have been like. If you're interested in seeing it, these are the steps to getting the model and placing it in teh correct location in Google Earth.

• You'll need Google Earth installed on your computer which is a very cool (and free) virtual model of the Earth. You'll need a somewhat fast internet connection and can download Google Earth from http://earth.google.com/
  
  
  
  
• Once you've installed Google Earth you can find the Arlington model in the Google 3D Warehouse. The direct link is here but you can also find it by going to http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/ and searching for "Arlington Eastern Shore".
  
  
  
• Once you've gotten to the page with the Arlington Model, click the button that says "Google Earth" in the download section and Google Earth will open and you'll be flown to the model's location. You may get a message box asking you what to do with the file...just say to open it in Google Earth which should be the default and you'll be in business.