The last lines in Gone with the Wind are perhaps some of the most memorable in movie history: Scarlett O’Hara, eyes aflame, declares her plan to win back Rhett Butler, “Tara! Home. I’ll go home. And I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all . . . tomorrow is another day.”

Well, to live up to her words, Scarlett would have to travel to an old dairy barn in Lovejoy, Georgia, where a Civil War fanatic is rebuilding the Gone with the Wind set, more than 75 years after it was constructed for the film.

Yes, set—Tara was never a real home, but a set built on a back lot in Culver City, California. Disappointed? You’re in good company. Gone with the Wind producer David Selznick famously bemoaned, “It is almost symbolic of Hollywood. Tara has no rooms inside. It was just a façade. So much of Hollywood is a façade.”

Regardless, Tara is an architectural marvel and achievement. Its neoclassical pillars and grand cathedral windows helped Lyle Wheeler win an Oscar for best art direction. But somehow, while the players behind Gone with the Wind catapulted into stardom, Tara had the opposite trajectory. It sat on the movie lot for 20 years, until new studio owner Desi Arnaz dismantled and sold the façade, in 1959, to a Georgia company hoping to create a tourist attraction. That plan never happened.

Betty Talmadge, famous southern hostess and ex-wife of Georgia senator Herman Talmadge, bought the set years later in 1979. She, too, attempted to revive interest in Tara, but had no more luck than the others before her. When she died in 2005, Tara lay in pieces on her dairy barn’s concrete floor, untouched since she purchased it.

And then historian Peter Bonner of Jonesboro, Georgia, came along.

Bonner is a man stuck in the past—and that’s meant literally, as he’s known to wear a ragged Confederate uniform and drives a 1965 Chevrolet truck. When we asked his age, he replied, “I’m older than my children and younger than my flag.”

He is the creator of Peter Bonner’s Historical and Hysterical Tours, which began in Jonesboro with Bonner telling Civil War stories in his thick Georgia accent for tips in a Confederate cemetery and blossomed into a global attraction that he says has brought five million dollars worth of tourism to Georgia. “You can get on an air-conditioned bus!” Bonner told VF Hollywood with pride.

But his newest role may be his most important to date: the man who, after striking a deal with the son of Betty Talmadge, is finally restoring the Tara façade.

Bonner wants Tara to become the pièce de résistance on his Gone with the Wind tour, but his motive is apparently deeper, as in conversation he paraphrases William Faulkner’s famous line from Requiem for a Nun. “In the South, the past is not forgotten,” he said. “It’s not the past for me.”

They’re a fitting pair—the façade of Tara, which has been forgotten by so many and for so long, entering the care of a man who has dedicated his life to telling tales of the old, forgotten south.

Because only a dedicated, unrelenting passion for Gone with the Wind and history could drive someone to save Tara. If Field of Dreams was “If you build it,” Tara is “If you can really, actually build this damn thing”—there are more than 100 large pieces in the façade (Peter burst out in a hearty laugh when asked how many pieces the façade has in total) and there are no blueprints, or any guidelines, on how to put it together. The materials are so old that they are impossible to match, and even worse, impossible to replicate. “The hinges and everything, were handmade,” Bonner said. “They look like they were made by a blacksmith.” Plus, Bonner is funding this himself, a fact that he shrugs off. “What’s the worst that could happen? I get stuck with a Home Depot bill?”

Oh, and then there is Bonner’s newfound responsibility of being an architectural historian—although the number of careers he’s had puts Barbie to shame (a probation officer, a real-estate agent, an actor, a counselor, and a therapist, just to name a few), a conservator is not one of them. Once, a concerned onlooker asked if Bonner should be wearing gloves while working with the façade. “I said, ‘What? This stuff has been covered in dirt for so long!’” he explained with a chuckle. “‘No, I don’t wear white gloves!’”

Bonner may not be an orthodox conservationist, but he is a cautious one. He doesn’t use any glues or proxies, and as of now sets up the finished pieces in sections. His reasoning: “If it comes out that all of this needs to be taken apart and taken to the Smithsonian one day, they aren’t going to be putting my picture on the wall with a big X over it!”

So far, Bonner has made the most progress with the Tara façade since it was dismantled more than 50 years ago. And each day, he plugs on. He recently finished the cathedral window where Scarlett discussed the war with the Tarleton Twins, and is now working on the porch where Melanie Hamilton sat with Confederate soldiers. He talks about completed pieces with unbridled enthusiasm, often writing long, scrolling updates on his “Saving Tara” Facebook page.

One can only recall the opening lines of Gone with the Wind, which remember a life that “is no more than a dream remembered. A civilization gone with the wind.” But one thing is for sure: if Peter Bonner has his way, Tara will not face the same fate.