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Nature on the Georgia Coast

by Lee Foster

Georgia boasts more undeveloped coastline than any other Atlantic seabord state. Numerous islands, rich estuarine environments, and extensive swamps make Georgia’s coast more diverse than the mileage claim alone suggests.

For the traveler with an interest in nature, there are many pleasures to savor here. Several days can be passed perusing the islands, sometimes called the Barrier Islands because of their position as storm blocks along the coast. Be sure to include a day of alligator-viewing at the Okefenokee swamp on the southern edge of the coast.

Summer is the busiest travel time here, but the optimal visitor months are the cooler, less crowded, and less buggy April-May or October-November

THE COASTAL ISLANDS

The Barrier Islands along the Georgia coast amount to one of the major natural treasures of the eastern U.S. In the midst of them flows the Altamaha River, the second most voluminous drainage on the east coast.

On the islands the signature plant is the sprawling live oak tree, spreading huge canopies, strewn with Spanish moss. The moss, actually an air plant in the pineapple family, hangs from the trees but gathers its nourishment and moisture from the air. The moss of the oak trees, as seen at different times of the day in the filtered light, alternately creates eerie, romantic, or meditative feelings in the viewer.

“Especially as the light changes in these oak trees, you tend to discover something more about yourself,” noted author Eugenia Price said to me on a recent visit.

This special natural environment forms the backdrop for her popular historic fictions about the region, such as BELOVED INVADER.

Another special plant, among many in the region, is the resurrection fern, which grows on the oak branches. This fern gradually shrivels up in dry weather and then surges back to life when rain falls.

Birds, especially herons and egrets, can be seen everywhere. The osprey has made a comeback here with the gradual control of DDT pesticides, which accumulated in the bird eggs, causing shells to become brittle and crack.

Fish life is prolific, both for fresh and salt water species. Sport fishing is popular.

Dolphins can be seen frequently at sites such as the pier at St. Simon Island, another of the several islands. Pilot whales often venture into the area.

Amidst the islands are plentiful marshes, which add up to some 350,000 acres of marsh along the coast. Shellfish, fish, and small mammals make their homes here, thriving at the base of a food chain that finds humans, consumers of shrimp, oysters, crab, catfish, and clams, at the top.

The best single place for most visitors to experience nature along this coast is on Jekyll Island, now a large state park. Over 20 miles of bike paths take you out through the marshes, where raccoons can often be seen feeding. Added miles of paths through the forests may reveal an orange warbler to the curious. Lovely beach walking and picnic areas can be found around the island.

All life in the region, including the presence of man, becomes humbled by the occasional hurricane, nature’s manner of reasserting its authority.

THE GREAT SWAMP

The other nature experience of prime interest to travelers here is a visit to the Okefenokee Swamp, a few miles inland near the southern end of the island chain. The ready access point is the Waycross entrance.

Anyone who has heard the world Okefenokee will probably find it rattling around in the deep recesses of the imagination. This is the swamp of swamps, covering some 600 square miles, now protected as a National Wildlife Refuge.

Alligators are the number one attraction of the Okefenokee at Waycross. A visitor takes a guided motorboat ride through the swamp, with the guide stopping the motor periodically, allowing the boat to float through the cypress, red gum, and bay trees. Suddenly a large alligator appears somnolently on the bank. With the banning of alligator products, such as shoes, handbags, and belts, the reptiles have climbed back to comfortable numbers, which means about 20,000 in the Okefenokee alone.

Guides, such as Jamie Walker, can tell you when you are entering an alligator habitat because the reptiles are highly territorial.

“That’s a youngster,” noted Jamie, “a six footer, age 25.”

Alligators can attain 15 feet, weigh 700 pounds, and live as long as 90 years.

A guide will point out some of the more delicate features of the swamp, such as the blue iris or golden lily pad flowers. The great swamp hosts 37 species of fish, 200 of birds, 40 of mammals, and 34 of snakes.

A climb to a high tower at Waycross puts you above the treetops in this predominantly cypress forest, which stretches as far as eye can see.

Okefenokee, sometimes called America’s Botanic Garden because of its large numbers of plant species, is one of the special American natural environments, the birthright of every citizen to see and enjoy.

THE EARLY APPRECIATORS

Historic wrangling over this superb natural environment is an absorbing tale and must be understood to comprehend how man has affected the ecosystem.

The Spanish and the English were the first contestants, with Spain inching north after founding its colony at St. Augustine in 1568. England countered by supporting a Georgia colony under the capable James Oglethorpe. After the English triumphed and the Civil War decided the issue of national unity, a group of northern millionaires bought one of the islands, Jekyll Island, and set up a millionaires club.

Three sites along the coast, moving north to south, tell the story. A visitor who stops at them will comprehend the broad outlines of the drama.

Fort King George portrays just how grim life was for a soldier at this outpost of civilization in the 18th century. A lively interpretive program shows everything from musket firing to telling the time of day with a compass-sundial contraption. Soldiers survived their hardships with the aid of a steady daily supply of rum. Fort King George began in 1736 as a buffer between the British and the interests of Spain and France.

Fort Frederica and the nearby battle site known as Bloody Marsh, both on an island called St. Simons Island, show the decisive site where the English turned back the Spanish threat. Fort Frederica was a model city in 1742, well fortified and supported, with a flourishing life in all the trades that made a city prosper. Founder James Oglethorpe’s vision of the ideal city meant no slaves, no hard liquor (ale was allowed), and no lawyers. However, within a quarter century, the city became a victim of its military success. With the threat of Spain reduced, the English crown withdrew subsidies, causing the city to decay. Tradesmen departed for the Carolinas.

After England triumphed on the Georgia coast, planters organized a slave-based rice economy and later a cotton economy. Sea Island Cotton, the subspecies grown here, commanded a high price in the market. The slave economy was doomed, as historic hindsight attests. One of the influential players in this historic drama was Fanny Kemble, a gifted woman writer and plantation owners’ wife. Appalled with the conditions she observed in 1836, Fanny left her husband and sailed for England, where she published a scathing volume, RESIDENCE ON A GEORGIA PLANTATION.

The Jekyll Island Historic Tour provides a fascinating glimpse of life in these parts from 1886-1942. In 1886 a consortium of New York millionaires, Morgan, Rockefeller, Gould, Macy, and their cohorts, bought Jekyll Island and created a preserve for the rich alone, called the Jekyll Island Club, with 100 shares sold to approved members. For the next half century this northern elite cavorted on the island, building mansion “cottages” or living in a central club building. They came for the winter season, December through Easter, emphasizing hunting at the start, and later, bicycling, golf, or tennis as the fashions of the time dictated. The style of the club was one of “simplicity,” but lavish dinners in full formal dress might suggest rustic elegance as a better description of the lifestyle.

It is estimated that the shareholders, in the year 1900, controlled a sixth of the world’s wealth.

THE GREAT RESORTS

Two of America’s great resorts await a visitor who wants to peruse this region. They are The Cloister Hotel and the Jekyll Island Club.

The Cloister Hotel, on Sea Island, has steadily sustained its Five Star rating since opening in 1928. Understated elegance is the mode here, with service an important quality. Three staff attend every two guests. The resort has 264 rooms and the price of a room includes all meals and facilities, whether a beach club pool or an automated tennis-ball server. The grounds exhibit the lovely oak trees for which the region is famous. Resembling a cruise ship on land, the resort benefits from the close personal touch of continuing family ownership, headed in sequence by Alfred Jones I, then Alfred Jones II, then Alfred Jones III. Employees tend to be career members of the extended family. The Cloister’s dining room, open to the public if the resort is not sold out, serves all the seafood of the region as well as Georgia quail. This is the site where, typically, our current president, George Bush, chose to honeymoon in 1945.

The Jekyll Island Club is the new resort of the region, opening in 1986, re-creating for today’s traveler the world of the millionaires at the turn of the century. Croquet players, dressed in white, can be seen hitting their wooden balls on the lawns in front of the Jekyll Island Club, transporting the visitor into a fin-de-siecle mood. You lodge right in the historic properties of yesterday’s nabobs. When at Jekyll Island, as suggested, be sure to take the Historic Tour. For the casual traveler not staying at this great resort, the Jekyll Island Club is still a major historic stop to visit, looking at the adjacent grand houses, called cottages, that the Rockefeller, Morgan, and Gould families built. Jekyll Island Club is also the more photogenic of the two resorts. Jekyll Island as a whole offers good opportunities for all travelers to enjoy the natural environment of the region.

THE GEORGIA COAST TODAY

The Georgia coast contains many further discoveries in the area of nature and history for a rambling traveler.

The experience of travel along this coast amounts to accumulating observations that all-of-a-sudden become tactile with a special personal discovery.

For example, you may learn that tourism is now the driving force in the economy, replacing the rice or cotton of yesterday and the fishing or pulp mills of today as major employers. The occasional sickly sweet smell of the pulp mill pervades the region.

Such information might coalesce, for example, during a brief stop at the coastal town of Darien. There you might see the shrimp boats leaving for a coastal catch and learn that Howell Boone now turns out $35 tins of caviar, eggs from the local sturgeon that he catches and smokes. You might sit on the porch of Carolyn Hodges’ Open Gate bed-and-breakfast establishment and look out over the quiet town square, perhaps with a Mint Julep in hand if the weather is warm.

As you rock, Carolyn Hodges reflects, “When I sit on this porch and look out at the square, I suddenly enter an earlier century.”

The joy of the Georgia coast is partly that this splendid natural environment has been so little destroyed by the hand of man in the last 300 years. As we enter the era when we purposefully save the natural environment, the Georgia coast stands out as a legacy worth saving and now assuredly protected.

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GEORGIA’S COAST: IF YOU GO

The overall tourism resource for Georgia is the Georgia Department of Industry, Trade, and Tourism, PO Box 1776, Atlanta, GA 30301, 404/656-3590, web site www.georgia.org.

For detailed information on the coast, write to Brunswick Golden Isles Tourist Bureau (4 Glynn Avenue, Brunswick, GA 31520, 912/265-0620).

For more information on the great Okefenokee Swamp, contact the Okefenokee Swamp Park (Waycross, GA 31501, 912/283-0583) or the Refuge Manager (Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Route 2, Box 338, Folkston, GA 31537, 912/496-3331.)

Eugenia Price’s novels on the region, such as BELOVED INVADER, are widely available in bookstores and libraries.

For overall information on Jekyll Island, contact Jekyll Island State Park Authority (375 Riverview Drive, Jekyll Island, GA 31520, 912/635-2236).

The two major resorts of the region are: The Cloister Hotel (Sea Island, GA 31561, 800/SEA-ISLAND) and The Jekyll Island Club, A Radisson Resort (371 Riverview Drive, Jekyll Island, GA 31520, 800/822-1886).

If flying to the Georgia coast, the major access city is Savannah, which has a large airport and is one of the loveliest cities in the South to explore.

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Copyright © 2012 Lee Foster, Foster Travel Publishing. All rights reserved.

This article was written by Lee Foster of Foster Travel Publishing. Contact Lee at .

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