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Senior
Life
TRAVEL
Georgia's Barrier Islands: Rich in history,
beauty & serenity
TRAVELS
WITH CHARLIE
Veteran Georgia
journalist Charles
Seabrook has
covered native
wildlife and
environmental
issues for decades.
For “Travels with
Charlie,’’ he visits and
photographs communities and
places throughout the state.
Renowned for their unique
natural beauty, fourteen barrier
islands fringe Georgia’s 100-mile-
long coast - from Tybee Island
near Savannah to Cumberland
Island at the Florida state line.
Four of them can be reached via
causeways and bridges; the rest
can be reached only by boat.
Geologists call them barrier
islands because they sit like stoic
sentinels between the open ocean
and the mainland. Poets and
artists celebrate them as places
of serenity and breathtaking
scenery. Historians are drawn to
them because Timucuan Indians,
Spanish soldiers, Jesuit monks,
Scottish Highlanders, enslaved
Africans and the leisurely rich
once inhabited them.
Today, the islands’ splendor,
rich history, sandy beaches,
upscale hotels, world-class golf
courses, fishing piers and other
amenities attract some 2.5 million
visitors per year. A handful of the
islands - Jekyll, St. Simons, Little
St. Simons, Sea Island - make up
Georgia’s famed Golden Isles, a
name supposedly inspired by the
islands’ astonishing beauty, mild
weather and natural radiance.
I visit the islands three or four
times a year, but mostly for nature
watching, bird watching, hiking
and other outdoor activities. The
islands are havens for wildlife:
The broad estuaries and vast salt
marshes surrounding the islands
are some of the most fertile and
productive ecosystems on Earth.
In spring, the marshes, estuaries
and the islands’ magnificent
maritime forests abound with a
variety of migrating songbirds
and shorebirds. In late spring and
through summer, as many as 3,000
endangered sea turtles crawl onto
barrier island beaches to lay their
eggs. In winter, highly endangered
northern right whales arrive in the
ocean waters just offshore from
the islands to give birth to their
calves - the only known calving
grounds for the whales.
In a large sense, Georgia’s
barrier islands are fortunate.
After the Civil War, wealthy
entrepreneurs started buying up
the islands and making them into
private retreats and preserves.
Most of Cumberland Island, for
instance, was bought by Thomas
Carnegie (brother of Andrew
Carnegie) and his wife Lucy. In
the latter part of the 20th Century,
the entrepreneurs’ heirs sold most
of the islands to state and federal
agencies, while a couple of the
islands remained in the hands of
private owners who pledged to
protect them. So, unlike most of
the other islands on the Atlantic
coast, Georgia’s islands remain
largely undeveloped.
The upshot is that all but three
18 ATLANTA SENIOR LIFE | December 2022
AtlantaSeniorLife.com
