Widower Ty Ty Walden, [Robert Ryan], lives on a stubbornly neglected Georgia farm with his three children—Buck [Jack Lord], Shaw [Vic Morrow], and Darlin' Jill [Fay Spain]—and Buck's wife, Griselda Walden [Tina Louise], who also lives with the family. Ty Ty's daughter Rosamund [Helen Westcott] stays in Peachtree Valley with her millworker husband Will, while their estranged son Jim Leslie [Lance Fuller], a wealthy cotton broker in Augusta, remains distant from the farm’s daily grind. For fifteen years, Ty Ty has dug and dug, chasing a treasure his grandfather allegedly left behind, and the land bears the toll of that fruitless quest.
Pluto Swint [Buddy Hackett] arrives in town to announce his bid for sheriff. The moment he steps around back, where Darlin' Jill is cooling off in an outdoor tub, a tense tease unfolds: she toys with him, and he peeks with one eye while trying to act unaffected. In a bid to anchor his good luck, Ty Ty kidnaps an albino named Dave Dawson [Michael Landon], who, using a divining rod, claims the gold lies on the parcel Ty Ty has designated as God's Little Acre. Ty Ty plucks the cross marker from the ground and declares that God told him to move it, thereby removing any obligation to share found gold with the church. That same night, Darlin' Jill seduces Dawson, only for a field worker, Uncle Felix [Rex Ingram], to confront him with a gun and drive him away, saying, “I ain’t going to shoot you, son, but this gun might.”
The prospect of treasure interrupts farming and pushes Ty Ty to seek funds. At Uncle Felix’s suggestion, he goes to his son Jim Leslie’s mansion to ask for a loan. Jim Leslie is dismissive, arrogant, and opportunistic—he loans the money but then makes a pass at Griselda and vows to make her his own, a move that stirs further tension within the family.
In Peachtree Valley, the cotton mill sits idle, leaving tens of thousands of unemployed men restless. Will, Rosamund’s millworker husband, is determined to rekindle work and energy in the town by reactivating the mill’s power. Late one night, he breaks into the mill gates and dismantles the lock, drawing Griselda into the moment as the crowd watches. She and Will share a charged kiss and drift away; when Will returns to the crowd, the caretaker within shoots him for trespassing. Griselda delivers the grim news to Rosamund, who laments the heartbreak already familiar to their family.
Back at the farm, the Walden clan tears itself apart over Will’s death and Griselda’s conduct. Buck confronts Jim Leslie after the theft of Griselda, and a violent clash erupts. Ty Ty steps in to prevent further bloodshed, and in the struggle, Jim Leslie is fatally struck by a pitchfork when Buck drives him away. The moment leaves Ty Ty wounded and wiser, and he contemplates the cost of chasing wealth as his sons retreat into their own paths. He gazes out over the earth he has tilled and holes dug over years, and he resolves to stop digging if God will protect his family.
Time moves on. Pluto Swint is now sheriff, and Darlin' Jill becomes his fiancée, while Buck and Griselda reconcile and the family returns to the land, plowing and praying in unison for a future that finally seems plausible after years of strain. Yet the old itch lingers in Ty Ty: beneath the surface, he finds the blade of an old shovel and wonders if the gold might lie just beneath another patch of earth. The final shot returns to the pond—the resting place of the marker for God's Little Acre—leaving viewers with a quiet, unresolved sense of what the land has asked of them and what it may yet forgive.
