Jekyll Island

Jekyll Island is a state park, and that fact governs everything else about it. Georgia bought the island in 1947, opened it to the public the following year, and created the Jekyll Island Authority in 1950 to run it. The Authority still does, which is why the island has no city government and why its development is overseen rather than simply built out, although private investment and partnerships fund much of it.

Before the state, the island belonged to very few people. Oglethorpe named it in 1733, and in 1886 it became the Jekyll Island Club, the winter retreat of some of the wealthiest families in America. The club grounds and buildings are now a National Historic Landmark district, designated in 1978, and three of them went onto the National Register before that: the Club itself in 1972, and Faith Chapel and the Rockefeller Cottage in 1971.

Older still is the Horton House on Riverview Drive, whose surviving structure dates to 1743. It is built in tabby, the coastal building material of oyster shell, lime burned from oyster shell, sand and water, poured into wooden forms the way concrete is now, and it sits on the National Register alongside the brewery ruins and the duBignon cemetery.

Public ownership is why so much of the island stays open to walk into. Driftwood Beach on the north end is the one everybody photographs, a shoreline of weathered trunks left where the beach eroded out from under the forest. The Georgia Sea Turtle Center rehabilitates turtles and lets you watch it happen, and Mosaic, the island museum, occupies the old club stables.

The Census records a small resident island inside all of that. It counted 866 residents in 2020 against 793 housing units, of which 256 were held for seasonal, recreational or occasional use and 459 were occupied as somebody’s usual residence. A University of Georgia study puts the island’s economy in lodging, food, retail, recreation and conventions, with the Authority a major employer alongside the hotels and businesses operating under it.

Jekyll is the southernmost of the Golden Isles, a Census-designated place rather than a town, in Glynn County. Glynn County Schools serves it, and you reach it from I-95 Exit 29, then US 17 and GA 520, the Downing Musgrove Causeway.

Sourced: tabby and how it was made, National Park Service. the Golden Isles definition and Jekyll as the southernmost, Golden Isles Convention and Visitors Bureau and Georgia state tourism. State acquisition 1947, public opening 1948 and the Authority’s creation in 1950, Jekyll Island Authority. Population and housing units, U.S. Census Bureau 2020 count for Jekyll Island CDP. Register listings and the 1978 landmark district, National Park Service. Attractions, Jekyll Island Authority. Economic activity, University of Georgia study. Access route, Georgia DOT. Seasonal use, 2020 Census Demographic and Housing Characteristics file, table H5, vacancy status. Occupied housing, the same file, table H3, occupancy status.