Jekyll Island is an island off the coast of the U.S. state of Georgia, in Glynn County; it is one of the Sea Islands and one of the Golden Isles of Georgia. The city of Brunswick, Georgia, the Marshes of Glynn, and several other islands, including the larger St. Simons Island, are nearby. Its beaches are frequented by vacationers and guided tours of the Landmark Historic District are available. Bike trails, walks along the beaches and sandbars, and Summer Waves, a waterpark, are a few of the many things vacationers can do. The district consists of a number of buildings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The island is also full of wildlife, consisting of many different mammals and reptiles living in the island's inland marshes.
Physical Setting
Jekyll Island is one of only four Georgia barrier islands that feature a paved causeway to access the island by car. It features 5,700 acres (23 km 2 ) of land, including 4,400 acres (18 km 2 ) of solid earth and a 200-acre (0.81 km 2 ) Jekyll Island Club Historic District. The rest is tidal marshlands, mostly on the island's western shore. The island measures about 7 miles (11 km) long by 1.5 miles (2.4 km) wide, has 8 miles (13 km) of wide, flat beaches on its east shore with sand packed hard enough for easy walking or biking, and boasts 20 miles (32 km) of hiking trails.
Like the other Sea Islands, Jekyll is mostly made of older Pleistocene land mass and smaller sections of younger Holocene land.
Northern end of the Island
The north end of the island is the main area that has been impacted by human development over the past few hundred years. Early settlers and the loggers that came after they developed plantations in this area and felled trees to be used for extra-strong ships during wartime. In later years, much of this wilderness has been 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 an astounding view of the Sidney Lanier Bridge, a 203-foot (62 m) tall suspension bridge on Hwy 17. There is a large fishing pier that 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 live oak tree roots, killed by beach sand eroded toward the south end of the island.
Horton House
A two-story structure built from tabby in 1742 stands in ruins along N. Riverview Rd. The house was occupied by Major William Horton during the British colonial period, who also brewed beer in Georgia's first brewery (the ruins of which are a few hundred yards down the road). This structure has been meticulously preserved over the past 100 years as an example of coastal Georgia building techniques and as one of the oldest surviving buildings in the state. Across the street from the Horton House ruins is the du Bignon cemetery, a tabby wall surrounding the graves of five people who all died in the 19th century.
Campground
Just across the street from the entrance to the Clam Creek picnic area is the campground, an 18-acre (73,000 m 2 ) 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 of the Island
The southern end of the island was virtually unused by settlers and visitors until the 20th century. After homes and motels were built along the northern beaches of the island, the southern areas were majorly used by African-Americans for segregated facilities until 1964. The multiple parallel dunes on the southernmost tip are a result of the beach 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 20-foot (6.1 m) high dune ridge that protects this wooded area from sea breezes. 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. Alligators can be seen here in the two ponds near the boardwalk.
Glory Beach
Access to this beach is by way of a long boardwalk built in the mid-1980s by the producers of the movie Glory , and it can be accessed from the soccer complex at the north end of the Jekyll Island 4-H center property. The boardwalk passes through a variety of natural habitats ranging from ancient dunes to freshwater sloughs. Looking south from the beach at the end of the boardwalk one can easily see Little Cumberland Island.
St. Andrews picnic area
The farthest point on the beach from Clam Creek, St. Andrews is a picnic area on the river side of the island, facing the marsh and mainland. This beach is very popular with fishing birds and dolphins, surfacing for air, can commonly be seen to the south.
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 Wanderer, the last slavery vessel to transport slaves without repercussions. On November 28 of 1858, nearly 50 years after the legal importing of slaves was outlawed in the United States, The Wanderer anchored near the southern portion of Jekyll Island, transporting 409 enslaved Africans ashore. The historic site includes 12-foot (3.7 m) tall steel sculptures of ship sails, signifying the cold hard reality of slavery.
Jekyll Island Club Historic District
In the mid-section of the river side of the island is a 240-acre (0.97 km 2 ) Historic District where most of the buildings from the Jekyll Island Club era still stand, most in remarkable preservation. The centerpiece of the grounds is the enormous Jekyll Island Club Hotel, a two-winged structure that contains numerous suites for rental, including a beautiful presidential suite that contains the 3-story turret on the front of the building. Thirty-three buildings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries surround the hotel, with many being mansion-sized cottages. Rooms in some of these cottages are for rent, while others exist 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 Rd. directly across from the historic district several times daily and detail much of the history of this area.
History
Native American settlement
In the mid-2nd millennium, the island now known as Jekyll was part of a coastal Georgia Native American chiefdom called Guale. Muskogian tribes, who comprised a majority of the Creek Nation, were the inhabitants of this territory.
These inhabitants allegedly hunted, gathered, and grew all of their food. The surrounding creeks yielded fish that were speared easily by hunters, and the tribes utilized native vegetation for food and drink, gathering nuts and fruit, even making a type of tea from parched holly leaves. These settlers also allegedly grew pumpkins, beans, tobacco, sunflowers, and maize among other crops.
Arrival of Europeans
Explorers from Spain were the first to make an official claim to Jekyll Island in 1510, giving it the name Isla De Ballenas (Whale Island) and later Juan Ponce de Leon served 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 despite the Spanish claim, describing the island as "the fairest, fruitfullest, and pleasantest of all the world," and renamed the island Ille de la Somme . Ribault later surrendered to the Spanish and was executed, an event that began a conflict between the two countries 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, and Spanish priests had established missions with the intention of converting Native Americans to Christianity. Upset that their culture, including dances, banquets, and bonfires, was being suppressed, natives from the modern area of Darien began destroying the missions and slaying the priests in a southward journey; however, Father Davilla on Jekyll was spared, and kept as a slave (though he was later released to the Spanish in a prisoner exchange).
In 1663–65, England established grants to land stretching southward from their Jamestown colony to an area below St. Augustine, Florida. The English allied themselves with the Cherokee, Creek, and Yuchi tribes, and sent members of these tribes armed with English weapons to attack the Spanish and Native American settlements
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