Leaving Cumberland Island, we headed south to regain the Intracoastal, then turned north going right past King’s Bay Naval Station- a nuclear submarine base.
The landscape is 17 miles of Cumberland Island to the east and wide salt marshes to the west. The Intracoastal really winds around in this stretch. The old light house on Cumberland is barely visible for the dunes.
As we cruise past Cumberland Island, we crossed the Satillo River and behind Jekyll Island.
In the 1880’s, the wealthy built cottages that served as their winter homes. Names like Vanderbilt, Pulitzer, Astor, Goodyear, and Morgan were common. The centerpiece of the winter resort is the Jekyll Island Club Lodge
The cottages are really large bungalows or two story homes with no kitchens- to “increase social interaction “ all the cottage owners dined together at the lodge.
We anchored and took the dinghy ashore and enjoyed exploring the cottages and lodge which were built from the year 1896 to 1906.
Much of the island is natural and we enjoyed walking through the trails and bike paths.
The Jekyll Island Club was dissolved and sold to the State of Georgia in 1947.
Returning to the boat, we pulled anchor and headed north behind Jekyll Island through some skinny(shallow) water. Tides change here between 4-7 feet.
We crossed St Simon Sound and anchored behind St Simon for the night. On the way we cruised past the Lynx a beautiful, very old schooner and saw the St Simon lighthouse.
April 18
Spent the morning with chores, then took the dinghy ashore to explore St Simon.
St Simon has a similar history as Jekyll and Cumberland- beginning with Native Americans around 3000BC, Jesuit missionaries in the mid 1500s and then the British in the 1730s. The name of the island derived from the St Simone mission established on the island.
In 1732, George Oglethorpe was granted land between the Savannah and Altamaha Rivers to establish the colony of Georgia. Monies were raised and the first shipload of 114 people set sail, reaching Georgia’s Savannah River in January 1733. Thus the town of Savannah was born.
Oglethorpe was also tasked with keeping the Spanish out of the colony, so he sailed south down the coast to find a location for a fort. He chose St Simon Island. Oglethorpe returned to St Simon, Georgia in 1735 with a shipload of 44 tradesmen and 72 women and children and began to build the town and fort of Frederico.
During this time Britain and Spain were at odds over control of the Americas and the issue of slavery. Oglethorpe led the failed siege on St Augustine, the Spanish retaliated by attacking Georgia. The conflict came to a head when the British ambushed the Spanish and killed most of their soldiers at the Battle of Bloody Marsh on St Simon Island.
After the conflict with Spain was resolved, the town of Federico began to decline. All that is left of the town is a few foundations and earthworks and a lower section of the fort.
St Simon then became an island filled with more than twelve plantations which grew sea cotton. No manor houses or buildings survived today, except for a few gated entrances.
The economy of this area today focuses on tourism and the lumber industry.
As a side note, the US Navy came to St Simon for the live oak lumber they needed to build their ships. Oak planks from St Simon were used to build the USS Constitution or Old Ironsides.
We toured the island hitting the highlights - St Simon lighthouse (1868), the remains of the town and fort of Federico, Christ Episcopal Church (originally built in 1884), an early Coast Guard Station, and Epworth by the Sea, a United Methodist retreat.
