Jekyll Island is an island located in Glynn County, Georgia, United States. It is one of the Sea Islands and one of the Golden Isles of Georgia barrier islands. The island is owned by the State of Georgia and run by a self-sustaining, self-governing body.
It was long used seasonally by indigenous peoples of the region. The Guale and the Mocama, the indigenous peoples of the area when Europeans first reached the area, were killed or forced to leave by the English of the Province of Carolina and their native allies, and by raids by French pirates. Plantations were developed on the island during the British colonial period. A few structures still standing are made of tabby, a coastal building material using crushed oyster shells.
The island was developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In November 1910, leading members of the American financial sector, including Paul Warburg and members of J.P. Morgan, met on the island in secret to draft legislation for a central bank which would later influence the Federal Reserve Act. The island was evacuated during World War II by order of the US government. In 1947 the state of Georgia acquired all the property, for security and preservation.
A popular tourist destination, the island has beaches frequented by vacationers. Guided tours of the Landmark Historic District are available. Bike trails, walks along the beaches and sandbars, and Summer Waves, a water park, are among the active attractions. The historic district features numerous buildings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The island is also full of wildlife, consisting of many different mammals, reptiles, and birds living and breeding in the island's inland salt marshes. In 2018, Architectural Digest named Jekyll Island one of the 50 most beautiful small towns in America.
The island was listed as a census-designated place prior to the 2020 census with a population of 866. Jekyll Island is considered the eastern terminus of the South Georgia Parkway (SR 520).
Physical setting
Jekyll Island is one of only four Georgia barrier islands that has a paved causeway to allow access from the mainland by car. It has of land, including of solid earth and a Jekyll Island Club Historic District. The rest is tidal marshlands, mostly on the island's western shore. The island measures about long by wide, has of wide, flat beaches on its east shore with sand packed hard enough for easy walking or biking, and boasts of hiking trails.
Like the other Golden Isles, Jekyll is mostly made of older Pleistocene land mass and smaller sections of younger Holocene land. The climate is humid subtropical, with rainfall concentrated in the hottest months.
Northern end of the Island The north end of the island is the main area that has been affected by human development over the past few hundred years. Early settlers and the loggers who came afterwards developed plantations in this area. They used fallen trees for the construction of ships. In the early 20th century, much of what was considered wilderness was developed into golf courses.
Clam Creek Picnic Area A short winding road leads to a parking lot and one of the three picnic areas on the island. To the west is a vast marsh hammock and a view of the Sidney Lanier Bridge, a -tall cable-stay bridge on Hwy 17. A large fishing pier extends northwest from the picnic area. To the east, a bridge crosses Clam Creek, in front of an inland marsh, to connect the picnic area to the North End Beach and Driftwood Beach. These beaches are characterized by another tidal creek emptying into St. Simons Sound and a boneyard of pine and water oak tree roots.
Horton House
The two-story house built from tabby in 1742 stands along N. Riverview Rd. The frame is intact, while the roof, doors, and windows are gone. Tabby was an indigenous material developed along the coast that was formed from crushed oyster shells, lime and water to make a kind of cement. It is featured in several historic sea island structures dating from the antebellum plantation era. The house was occupied by Major William Horton during the British colonial period. He developed Georgia's first brewery (the ruins of which are a few hundred yards down the road).
The remains of the house have been meticulously preserved over the past 100 years as an example of coastal Georgia building techniques; it is one of the oldest surviving buildings in the state. Across the street from the Horton House ruin is the du Bignon cemetery, established by the next family to own the house and much of the island for generations. Its tabby wall surrounds the graves of five people who died in the 19th century.
Campground Just across the street from the entrance to the Clam Creek picnic area is the campground, an facility in a cleared maritime forest. The campground has running water for restrooms, showers, and laundry, as well as a store and bike rentals.
Southern end
The southern end of the island was virtually unused by settlers and visitors until the late 19th century, when the army installed a gun mount on the southern end during the Spanish–American War. The installation looked over St. Andrews Sound toward Little Cumberland. In the second half of the 20th century, homes and motels were built by the Jekyll Island Authority along the northern beaches of the island. The multiple parallel dunes on the southernmost tip are a result of sand from the eroding north beaches traveling southward and being deposited in a recurved spit.
South Dunes picnic area This picnic area on the ocean side of the island features plenty of picnic tables, a full bathroom with showers, and a boardwalk to traverse the -high dune ridge to the beach. The dune is needed to protect the wooded area and interior of the island from erosion due to storms. This area was repaired in 1983, with bulldozers pushing new primary dunes into place to correct the damage caused by 30 years of beachgoers trampling over the enormous dunes to the beach.
Glory Beach Access to this beach is by way of a long boardwalk. It was built in the mid-1980s by the producers of the film Glory, which was partially filmed here, and has been named for the film. The boardwalk, recently repaired, can be accessed from the soccer complex at the south end of the Jekyll Island. The boardwalk passes through a variety of natural habitats, ranging from ancient dunes to freshwater sloughs.
St. Andrews picnic area St. Andrews is a picnic area on the intercoastal side of the island, facing the marsh and mainland. It is the farthest point on the beach from Clam Creek. This beach is very popular with fishing birds. Dolphins frequently feed here and travel through the area; they are visible when surfacing for air.
In 2008, the Jekyll Island History Museum, the Jekyll Island Authority, and the Friends of Historic Jekyll Island commemorated the survivors of the slave ship The Wanderer, the next to last ship documented to transport slaves to US territory in the prohibited Atlantic slave trade.Joye Brown, "The Wanderer", Newsday, 12 May 2009, accessed 12 May 2009
Clotilda, out of Mobile, Alabama, brought in 110 slaves in July 1860, and is ranked last. Because the ship was burned and sunk, some observers thought accounts of its slave voyage was a hoax, but there is considerable documentation. In January 2018 a reporter announced finding wreckage in mud in the Mobile River, which a team of archeologists had affirmed may be the ruins of the Clotilda.
The Wanderer was built in Setauket, New York as a pleasure boat, but it was acquired by Southerners who opposed the prohibition on the Atlantic slave trade. Dan Chapman, "Slave ship's voyage of shame recalled", Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 23 Nov 2009, accessed 12 May 2009 They had it converted in the Congo and Angola to carry slaves, and the captain purchased more than 500 to take to the US. After a six-week voyage in which more than 100 slaves died, on November 28, 1858, The Wanderer anchored near the southern portion of Jekyll Island. Its crew took 409 to 465 enslaved Africans ashore, smuggling them to the mainland. News of the slave ship set off a wave of outrage. The federal government's effort to prosecute the conspirators was unsuccessful.
A public art sculpture was commissioned for this site. It is a -tall steel sculpture of ship sails, intended to signify the harsh, hard nature of slavery.
Jekyll Island Club Historic District
In the midsection of the intercoastal side of the island is a designated Historic District. This includes most of the buildings erected during the Jekyll Island Club era. They have been carefully preserved. The centerpiece of the grounds is the large Jekyll Island Club Hotel, a two-winged structure that contains numerous suites for rental. The presidential suite contains the three-story turret on the front of the building. Thirty-three buildings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries surround the hotel; many are the elaborate mansion-sized "cottages" built by the rich. Some cottages offer rooms for rent for temporary stays. Others have been adapted for use as museums, art galleries, or bookstores. The hotel is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The historic district itself has been listed as a National Historic Landmark District since 1978.
Tram tours originate from the Jekyll Island Museum located on Stable Road directly across from the historic district. They run several times daily and guides describe much of the history of this area.
History
In the mid-2nd millennium, the island now known as Jekyll was near the border between the Guale people and the Mocama people. Historians have debated whether the town of Guadalquini was on Jekyll Island or St. Simon's Island, and whether the people that lived there late in the 16th century were Guale or Mocama. By early in the 17th century Guadalquini was occupied by the Mocama. Both the Guale and the Mocama became part of the Spanish mission system. In the late 17th century the Guale and the Mocama were driven out of what is now Georgia by attacks from French pirates and from native allies of the English in the Province of Carolina. The survivors resettled in what is now Florida.
The men used spears to take fish from the surrounding creeks. The women were experts on the native vegetation, gathering nuts and fruit. They made a type of tea from parched holly leaves. These settlers were said to also have cultivated the three sisters: squash and pumpkins, beans, and corn (maize); as well as sunflowers and tobacco, which was used for many ritual purposes and celebrations.
Arrival of Europeans In 1510 explorers from Spain were the first to land at Jekyll Island, naming it Isla De Ballenas (Whale Island). Later Juan Ponce de León was appointed as the civil governor of this and Spain's other claimed North American territories. In 1562 French explorer Jean Ribault claimed the island for France and renamed it as Ille de la Somme. Ribault later surrendered to the Spanish and was executed. The two countries engaged in competition and armed confrontations along the Georgia and Florida coasts. After his army swiftly defeated the French, Philip II of Spain immediately had a colony established on Jekyll.
More brief conflicts between these two countries along the coastline followed. Spanish priests established missions intending to convert Native Americans to Christianity. No mission is known to have been established on Jekyll; however, the Spanish influenced the island from their mission on St. Simons Island. After the Westo invasion on the mainland, they began destroying the missions and slaying the Spanish priests, traveling south along the coast. They spared Father Xander Davilla on Jekyll, keeping him as a slave. (He was later released to the Spanish in a prisoner exchange).