Cumberland Island National Seashore

Cumberland Island National Seashore was located right in the middle of the eleven NPS sites making up my second trip (aka Group 12). I was not thrilled about this.

Having been to Canaveral National Seashore a few times hoping to watch a rocket launch, I expected Cumberland Island was more of the same: long stretches of pristine beaches with no hotels and boardwalks just across the dunes. And very little else.

The problem was that, unlike Canaveral which was accessible by car, Cumberland Island required a 45-minute ferry ride on an NPS vendor’s boat costing $14 each way. Once on the island, there was no transportation unless you brought a bike (bike rentals used to be available but are no longer). I could probably walk across the island from the ferry dock to the ocean – approximately 3/4 of a mile. Then what? The return ferry was six hours later.

I then noticed on the National Park Service webpage that there was a “Lands and Legacies” tour that would take over five hours. Apparently, there was a bit of history on the islands, though I was curious about whether there was really enough to fill five hours. The tour seemed a bit expensive, but my other options seemed much less appealing. Perhaps it was good that my back and legs hurt. In my younger and really cheaper days, I would have foregone the tour and just wandered around for several hours.

The tour turned out to be absolutely worth it. There were 8 or 9 of us total, filling the van. The driver/tour guide has been doing this for a long time. His wealth of information meant he talked almost continuously while the van was driving the incredibly bumpy dirt roads of the island. The first Europeans on the island were the Spanish. They came riding their horses but quickly decided the island offered nothing for them. They went elsewhere but they left the horses. To this day, the descendants roam the island as a feral herd.

A more permanent presence came in the person of Robert Stafford. He built a plantation on the island, and of course, he had his slaves. However, Robert seemed to play fast and loose with Georgia laws concerning slaves. He employed the “task” system, where each day slaves were given task lists. Once completed, the rest of the day was theirs. He allowed his slaves to hire themselves (and their skills) out to the local population in that available time. When they were paid, Stafford created a private bank on his plantation where he allowed each person to have an account (and was apparently very honest in the holdings). Furthermore, contrary to law, he educated his slaves, teaching not only the basics but things like accounting. This is important later.

Come the end of the Civil War, and now all of these slaves are free. Most hang around the island, having nowhere else to go and engage in farming. Down from the north come some rich investors, who recognize the natural beauty of the island, and decide it would be an ideal place for a hotel for northerners to visit in the winter. But who to build it?

They approached the now free men and asked if they would like jobs building the hotel. They agreed. The investors then offered to build a small settlement of houses (cleverly called The Settlement). They would sell the houses to the workers at very cheap prices by deducting from each paycheck. The workers instead pulled money from the bank accounts and paid cash for their own homes.

Many of the workers who built the hotels (there ended up being more than one) stayed on and worked in various capacities in the resorts.

Around this time, the soap opera “lives of the rich and famous” starts on Cumberland Island. Lucy Carnegie, wife of Thomas, who was the brother of the more famous Andrew, decided she was rich enough that she should be able to live on Jekyll Island, just to the north of Cumberland Island. Jekyll Island was the exclusive playground for the richest of the richest blue-bloods in the nation. One had to apply and be accepted to even think about moving there. Lucy applied – and was rejected. Apparently, they found some plebian blood in her ancestry. Horrors.

Not to be denied, she had her husband buy huge tracts of Cumberland Island (I can just hear Thomas saying “yes, dear”). She built her own mansion and moved there. Her husband and spoiled brats -er- I mean children would visit. As wedding gifts, when a child married, she built them their own mansion elsewhere on the island.

In one case, the spoiled son was marrying an even more spoiled child named Margaret Thaw. Upon seeing what must have been a 10,000-square-foot home, Margaret declared it totally insufficient and demanded that daddy make it bigger. Wings were subsequently added to the mansion to satisfy Margaret.

The tour continued through much more interesting history, including the story of how John Kennedy Jr held his wedding at the small church in The Settlement without the media ever finding out. For details, go to Cumberland Island and take the tour ☺.

Let’s skip to the end. When Lucy Carnegie died in 1916, she left everything to her children – except the holdings on Cumberland Island. She knew her kids were spoiled brats who would just destroy the island she had grown to love. The land was left to her grandchildren to be held in trust until all of the children had passed away.

Fast forward to the 1960s. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall wanted to establish a National Park unit on Cumberland Island. At that time, there was not the enthusiasm to protect such resources as there was in later years. He had little support in Congress. Along came the Carnegie grandchildren. They would like to donate their lands to the Park Service to keep the island as it is forever.

Of course, there was one problem. An investor had already hit them up trying to buy out the heirs to build a major resort and development on the island. Unfortunately, at least one grandchild, needing the money, had sold. The other grandchildren told Udall that the land was his if he got the land back from the developer. With no government funds to do so, the project looked dead. The state of Georgia, smelling tax revenue, actually backed the investor and considered condemning the land to seize it and give it to him.

As the story was related on our tour, at a dinner with one of the heirs of Andrew Mellon, Udall confessed the island was likely going to be lost. Shortly thereafter, the Mellon Foundation made a $5 million dollar donation to the park service, enabling them to buy out the developer, and shortly after, the National Seashore was established.

This was supposed to be one of the least interesting stops on my current trip. It turned into the longest blog entry written to date, and one of the most fascinating history lessons I’ve had in a long time. And this blog entry left a lot out. The biggest lesson: never judge a park from preconceptions. Every place I’ve visited so far has something worth seeing or learning.

Steve