The 170-acre Cypress Gardens is nestled on the former Dean Hall Plantation. Its history dates back to the 1725, when Alexander Nesbitt was given 3,100 acres on the east side of the Cooper River. When he arrived from England to the Carolinas, he began to build on this property and named the plantation Dean Hall after his homeland of Dean, Scotland. The expanding rice fields and wetlands opened to the public in 1932.