Days 107-8 Two days at fabulous Jekyll Island

Two full days at Jekyll Island is not enough! Today Jekyll Island is owned by the state, but when the Jekyll Island Club (picture) opened in 1888, the exclusive limited membership of 50 consisted of many of the world's wealthiest families at the time. The list included names like Henry Hyde, Marshall Field, John Pierpont Morgan, Joseph Pulitzer, William H. Vanderbilt and several Rockefellers. They say that if all members were present at one time that it represented 1/7 of the world's wealth. The "Club" lasted only 54 years, but all of Jekyll Island is now a National Historic Site owned by the state of Georgia. They have preserved much of the original beauty and charm. There are few roads with limited access to most of the island, which is about 7 by 1.5 miles. Each member was allowed to build a "cottage".

The cottages were plain by the owner's standards, but the ones that we visited had 6 or 7 bedrooms upstairs with kitchen, butler's pantry, library and separate sitting rooms for men and women. It was a place for families, and women even hunted, fished, etc. Not all members built cottages, but they were able to stay in the big club building. Golf became popular here in the early 20th century, and there are now 63 holes.

We had lunch (less formal) in the Club where they still have live music at high tea and more formal dinners. The grounds are beautiful, but some buildings, such as extensive accommodations for staff and servants, are long gone.

 

The church (above) was quite beautiful, and not all of the "cottages" were plain. This is one of several Gould houses.

The Admiral (Teresa Gould Spang) found all of this interesting. However, these Gould's must be from the "other" side of the family since our guide referred to them as railroad (robber) barons...

Here we are sitting in a child's electric toy car from the early 1900s. At the insistence of the women, a small steam power generator was ultimately build, but the island remained a relatively rustic getaway spot.

As I said, access by car is still fairly limited, but they have wonderful, wide new walking and bike trails. This picture shows one of the boardwalks over a marsh. Before we leave in the morning, we plan on taking about an 11 mile ride around the northern end of the island on our electric scooters. On the Atlantic side there are miles of public beach and several new resort hotels, but the natural landscape is still preserved

So, what else did we do/see?

This picture shows part of the view from dinner this evening where broiled Mahi Mahi was the "Catch of the Day". Our marina has an excellent (small) pool and whirlpool. We also did a lot of regular maintenance type jobs on the boat so it was nice to jump in the pool after a stint in the engine room.

We rode along the ocean side several times on our scooters, and here we are on one of those trips. Today, we had lunch on the beach and went swimming several times. The beach here is real (quartz) sand as opposed to the famous white sand (broken sea shells) of Florida. I like real (quartz) sand beaches, but the downside here is that the sand in the water is quite muddy. The "mud" is washed out from the beach sands, and it makes the bottom just offshore kind of "squishy" with the mud/sand mixture...

I will close with one last picture of the beautiful sand dunes with the Atlantic Ocean in the background. Whoop!

.