NeverStopTraveling

By Jim Ferri

Look at a map and you’ll see that there’s a thumbnail of land that connects Georgia with the sea.

It’s not all solid land though, it’s what tourism promotion people call the “Golden Isles,” a quartet of small islands wedged in the coastal marshland of Georgia’s Lowcountry, about midway between Jacksonville, Florida and Savannah, Georgia.

The four islands – St. Simons, Little St. Simons, Sea and Jekyll – are fairly easy to get to since they’re relatively close to Interstate 95, which stretches from Miami right up to the Canadian border. The area is also fairly easy on the pocketbook since there’s a wide choice of hotels in the area, ranging from budget motels in the town of Brunswick near the Interstate, to spacious suites in coastal resorts, with prices to match.

When we visited we didn’t know anything about the area, so we just opted for a medium-priced motel outside of Brunswick. That turned out to be the best thing to do since it made for an easy drive to both St. Simons and Jekyll, the two most popular islands. We wound up not going to Little St. Simons since that was accessible only by boat and the folks at Sea island wouldn’t let us in since we weren’t guests.

When we arrived on St. Simons we found we had picked a perfect weekend since there was an outdoor antique show taking place under the huge old sprawling oaks near the public library. It was an interesting show to walk about, and we spent an hour or two at it before wandering over to nearby Mallory Street, the main thoroughfare, to poke in and out of several shops along it.

While the main attraction of St. Simon’s for Georgians is primarily its beaches, the island also has a few historic sites. One of the best is Fort Frederica National Monument on the west side of the island. It’s only a 20-minute or so drive from the shops on Mallory.

Built in 1736 to protect the British expansion in the Americas from the Spanish Empire, this is where General James Oglethorpe, the founder of the British colony of Georgia, and his men repulsed the Spanish in 1742. Frederica was once a small town but following the outbreak of peace it slowly descended into oblivion.

Today you can walk about the old military town that at its peak had more than 70 houses. As you stroll along the former Broad Street, now all covered with grass, you see the foundations of the old homes that were made with tabby, a mixture of limestone, sand and oyster, as well as parts of the old battery along the river. It’s a place well worth visiting whether you’re a history buff or not.

The following morning we set out across the Lowcountry marshland for Jekyll Island, only about 15 minutes away. The marsh was punctuated every now and then by hammocks, and crisscrossed by little rivulets catching the flow and ebb of the tide.

While we had found St. Simon’s to be a fairly spread out and a laid-back beach community, Jekyll Island turned out to be just the opposite both in size and temperament. Although the east side of the island, like St. Simons, draws a beach crowd, the main appeal for many is the upscale Jekyll Island Club, a hotel and National Historic Landmark on the west side.

When we approached the hotel, a beautiful 19^th century building complete with turret and a broad front porch, the first thing we saw were a couple playing croquet on the manicured lawn. They were dressed in all white, appropriately giving a Gatsby-like look to the whole place.

Jekyll Island was purchased by a group of wealthy families to use as a private retreat, and became home of the Jekyll Island Club. Its membership – which included such notables as Morgan, Vanderbilt, Pulitzer, Gould, Carnegie, Rockefeller and others who built “cottages” in the Jekyll colony – read like the social register.

Scattered about are plaques describing the club in its heyday. One down by the dock notes that the world’s most luxurious pleasure craft docked there between 1886 and 1942 and relates how John Pierpont Morgan’s yacht, the 304-foot Corsair II, was too large to dock at the pier. Morgan, it says, “was escorted ashore by a flotilla of small craft after a canon had sounded off his arrival in these waters.”

It’s interesting wandering through some of the beautiful rooms in the club, past the old-style restaurant (who’s summer menu included “braised green lip muscles,” “island crab cakes in a lemon-peach marmalade” and “roasted chicken strudel”) and out along the porch with its row of rockers. A few hundred yards beyond the club are some smaller buildings, likely a service area for the original Club and “cottages,” which now contain some shops. We wandered about some of them before heading back over to the river and out onto the historic dock.

There we found the Rah Bar, a funky little place on the end of the dock, plastered all over with dollar bills inside, where you can have peel ‘n eat shrimp, crawdads, oysters, and other Lowcountry specialties. We opted to eat at one of the outside tables, got two beers and the menus. It was a great place to spend an hour or so, and probably would have been spectacular at sunset.

Changes are coming to the Jekyll, however, and there’s now a small convention center and some hotels scattered along the ocean beaches. Although the state has said that overall development of the islands is limited to only 35% of the available land area, listen carefully and you’ll hear Rockefeller, Pierpont Morgan and Carnegie rolling over in their graves.

If you go:

Golden Isles Georgia
1505 Richmond Street, 2^nd Floor
Brunswick, GA 31520
Tel: (800) 933-2627
http://www.goldenisles.com

Jekyll Island Club
371 Riverview Drive
Jekyll Island, GA 31527
Tel: (855) 535-9547
http://www.jekyllclub.com

Fort Frederica National Monument
6515 Frederica Rd.
St. Simons Island, GA 31522
Tel: (912) 638-3639
http://www.nps.gov/fofr/index.htm

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