Jekyll Island Off The Beaten Path

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This is a quaint and small town south of Jekyll about 30 miles, down US 95 to Hwy 40. It is well preserved old buildings and homes and churches, with a nice waterfront scene. They have a home tour of Orange Hall, and a Naval Sub Museum packed with submarine information

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The time to spend seeing the old downtown is short and not a lot there. As much as they try, it still remains to be seen if it can draw people to the middle of town. Renovations and grant money has been infused for years. Now there is new retail out by US 95 exit, and that takes away from the potential to give resurgence to downtown. It is still worth a brief visit, though, and being just over the bridge, it is not far for restaurants to eat at besides.

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This is a nice visit to an old plantation that grew rice. At the peak it was 7300 acres and had 357 slaves to handle the field work and maintain the plantation. The plantation started in early 1800s, and the plantation home was built in 1850's by the Dent family. The Civil War aftermath was bad for the plantation and they sold off a lot of land to pay taxes. It was farmed as a rice plantation until 1913 by Dent heirs. It converted to a dairy farm until 1923,and then the daughters of the last heir continued living here until 1970's. It was eventually granted to the state of Georgia for the 696 remaining acres, where you can still see some rice operation along the marshes. There is a path leading to the home and outbuildings, and over to the marsh area, where the rice mill and dam as well as the trenching for drainage into the marsh can be seen.
The visitor center has a short film and some small museum items.
It is open Thursday-Saturday 9-5 with a $5 admission. Location is 13 miles north of Brunswick on Hwy 17

Right off of Beachview Dr - before it turns into Riverside, there is the Horton House Ruins. This is just that - the ruins of an old house. But across the street - is this cemetary...NOT creepy, but very interesting. On the headstones it tells how the people died...OK, maybe I let morbid curiosity get the best of me...but it's neat. And historical!

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Jekyll itself doesn't appear to have it's own lighthouse. You can see the lighthouse at the south end of St. Simons Island from the north end of Jekyll, and you can see the Cumberland Island lighthouse from the south end of Jekyll. These are two of the five Georgia lighthouses.

The second photo was taken from the ICW. The other four were taken from the beach on Jekyll

Heading toward the north end of the island, there is a curve where there is a bunch of mangrove trees over looking the ocean. Keep going past this area until you find a small paved bike trail on the right. This trail goes around to the peir if you follow the pavement...don't keep going straight to the BEACH!
You will find your littlepeace of heaven here!

Please check out some of my photos of the area.