And while enjoying the flora and fauna that is so carefully preserved on parts of Jekyll Island, you can thank some of the most ruthless industrialists and power brokers in American history. No kidding. The islands present protected status can trace its inception to the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, when Jekyll was the private playground of Rockefellers, Morgans, Vanderbilts, Pulitzers and other turn-of-the-century titans.

Most everyone around here knows at least an inkling about the storied Jekyll Island Club. Remnants of that reign of the nations wealthy elite (1886 - 1947) are readily evident still today. Folks can visit William Rockefellers Indian Mound cottage or tour the Jekyll Island Historic District and see it for themselves.

But the sight of a bird of prey plucking lunch from a lazy creek winding through an unblemished marsh near Jekylls Driftwood Beach also is a legacy of these avaricious tycoons. The conservation movement as we know it today was hardly the point of the Jekyll Island Club, which a popular national magazine of the era described as the richest, the most exclusive, the most inaccessible club in the world ...

But the truth is, these upper crust snowbirds really loved Jekyll Island just the way they found it. Except for the clubhouse, several extravagant cottages and a golf course, they barely touched the place. Coastal Georgia historian Buddy Sullivan considers the Jekyll Island Clubs exclusive membership among the regions first conservationists.

By the time the progeny of the clubs founders had grown bored of Jekyll and migrated south to Palm Beach and Miami, exclusive ownership of the island had left it pretty much unblemished. The state of Georgia bought the island for $675,000 in 1947, and opened it to the public as a state park a year later.

Jekyll Islands journey from private ownership to public preservation is a pattern Sullivan traces all along the coast in his book, The First Conservationists?: Northern Money and Low Country Georgia, 1866-1930. In the decades following the Civil War, rich Yankees bought up six of Coastal Georgias eight barrier islands. This includes Howard Coffin (Hudson Motors) on Sapelo Island, Thomas Carnegie (steel, brother of Andrew) on Cumberland Island and John Wanamaker (retail/marketing pioneer) on Ossabaw Island.

This to me was the first real conservation movement in Coastal Georgia, Sullivan said recently. They fell in love with the ecosystem and environment of our Georgia Coast. That is why Ive called them the first conservationists.

But back to Jekyll Island. British Gen. James Oglethorpe established an outpost there in the 1730s, after establishing Fort Frederica next door on St. Simons Island. He named the island for Sir Joseph Jekyll, a barrister and politician who supported Oglethorpe in founding the Colony of Georgia.

Oglethorpe later granted Jekyll Island to Maj. William Horton, who established a plantation using indentured servants to grow food for the Frederica settlement. Horton died in 1749. The two-story remnants of his 18th century estate are open to the public at Horton House on Jekyll Island.

By the 1790s, the island wound up in the hands of Christophe Poulain DuBignon, an aristocratic French sea captain who made his mark and his fortune as a privateer. The Dubignon familys cotton plantation thrived for the next several generations, although British troops ransacked the place and liberated nearly 30 slaves during the War of 1812.

Emancipation of all slaves and the end of the Antebellum era came with Souths defeat in the Civil War. So John Eugene DuBignon and his brother-in-law Newton Finney, who served as an officer in the Confederate Army, turned to the only people with money to burn at the time: rich Northerners.

The great-grandson of the DuBignon patriarch, John Eugene DuBignon busied himself buying up the whole of Jekyll Island. Finney, the former Confederate, wooed New York financiers on the idea of a private hunting club on Jekyll Island. It must have been a big hit. The tight-knit group of movers and shakers bought Jekyll outright from the two shrewd Southern salesmen in 1886.

And thus the Jekyll Island Club was born. From Christmas through Easter these barrier island barons would wile away their days amid luxury and mild Southern breezes on their own private island.

And it is all still there for us to see, pretty much as they left it. Their Jekyll Island Club is now the heart of the Jekyll Island Club Resort, a registered Historic Hotel of America. In addition to Indian Mound, there is the Goodyear Cottage, the DuBignon house and J.P. Morgans San Souci, considered the first condominium building.

That is not all. There is that sparkling shimmer on still waters as a blue heron stalks the marsh for his supper, the spartina grasses cast in shades of green and gold by the setting sun. I am most partial to that legacy.

Have ideas for a future local history column? Shoot me an email

See the rest here:

From elite retreat to public treasure, Jekyll remains the same - The Brunswick News (subscription)