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St. Simons Among Georgia's Golden Isles Holds A Treasure Chest Of History

hon thom phu quocThe King & Prince Resort on St. Simons Island, the largest of Georgia's Golden Isles, continues to be attracting guests since 1935, but what I hadn't realized, and what I was excited to find out, will be the historic significance from the island returning to colonial times. One of Georgia's barrier islands, St. Simons played a pivotal role in how America's history unfolded.
Indeed, the events here figure in to why the British prevailed on the Spanish, as well as the rest is history.
It is completely feasible to come to the King & Prince resort and get all its amenities, the beach, the championship the game, perhaps wander to the Neptune Park Pier as well as visit the Lighthouse or explore some from the restaurants and shops across the island, but never realize the intriguing stories that lay underfoot: how James Edward Oglethorpe, who founded the Georgia Colony, create Fort Frederica here to prevent the Spanish from expanding their colonial hold on tight the East Coast, the way the Wesley Brothers came from his request and established the Methodist Church in Georgia, how early settlers established plantations, first with indentured servants and very soon after with slave labor, how one woman who was witness on the horror of slavery, single-handedly may have turned the tide in the Civil War for your North, and exactly how, during World War II, advanced radar systems were developed within top secret.
Lighthouse Trolleys Tour
All of this unfolds for me personally during the Lighthouse Trolleys Tour - traveling in a a delightful open air old-timey trolley with plastic, roll-down windows because it rains - that offers the best way to get oriented for the island as well as important attractions, to help you go back by yourself and appreciate any particular item all the more, returning as I did with new appreciation to discover Christ Church, Fort Frederica, the Lighthouse and Museum, particularly.
It is an enjoyable open air trolley with plastic, roll-down windows when it rains.
From the King & Prince - itself a historic attraction - Dick Gardner, our Lighthouse Trolleys guide and driver, goes by the US Coast Guard Station, built-in 1936 by the WPA. It seems odd - of a block out of the water, but in those days, the station was only 15 yards from the steps towards the water. This is since the barrier islands are moving south every year, he says, (and because the exhibit with the Lighthouse Museum notes, this tropical isle is growing because with the soil and silt being deposited from inland rivers).
In colonial times, the coastal area from South Carolina to St Augustine was claimed both by Spain, and the British, therefore the entire Southeast coast was called "debateable." Indeed, it absolutely was the Spanish who named St Simons - San Simeon.
King George II sent James Edward Oglethorpe for the Georgia colony in 1733. After Oglethorpe organized the plans for Savannah, he came south to St Simons, as well as in February 1736, start to build a fortress, he named Fort Frederica after King George's son, Frederick (another fort was already named Fort Frederick). He built the Old Military Road that attached to south end (a similar road we travel today).
Governor Gonzalo M??ndez de Canzo, who established St Augustine, In July 7 1742, commanded 52 war ships, with 3000-5000 men, to invade St. Simons. They landed in the south end from the island and marched up Military Road.
This was Oglethorpe's worst nightmare. He knew that he could defend the island from your water, but he worried with regards to a ground invasion.
Gardner continues the storyplot as he pulls the trolley in to the Bloody Marsh Battle site.
The Spanish knew there are only 750 men at Ft Frederica. Oglethorpe petitioned South Carolina Governor for troops however the SC governor held rid of it for his or her own defense.
By now, Oglethorpe ended up on St. Simons island for six years. He was confident that no naval power could take the fortress, but he concerned with land invasion.
Scouted out where could place defense.
Oglethorpe sent Capt Demere with 200-250 Scottish Highlanders to ambush the Spanish ' harass them and delay them whenever you can.
So the Spanish soldiers landed, tired, hungry, and marched straight away through dense woods. They turn into a palmetto thicket and right in to the British ambush.
After a six hour battle, as to what became known as the Battle of Bloody Marsh, one British soldier died, but 200-300 Spanish soldiers were slain, the 'blood of Spain.'
The Spanish commander, panicked and retreated south, convinced that South Carolina had reinforced Oglethorpe and feared the worst defeat of his career. He loaded up his transports and sailed returning to St. Augustine.
This generated a treaty in 1759 where the Spanish quit their claim.
"This battle most significant in early formation of colonies. Were it not for British victory, the East Coast might be speaking Spanish."
Demere Road was named in honor from the captain.
Gardner pulls into Fort Frederick National Monument simply to get a peak on the outside, but I anticipate making a return visit to spend more time.
The trolley takes us passed Gascoine Bluff where Oglethorpe landed.
St. Simons became important for the lumber industry The 600-year old Southern live oak was much valued as dense hardwood. Indeed, in 1797, the Continental Congress authorized construction of six warships; St. Simons' Southern oak was used to construct the frigate USS Constitution which took to fight in Tripoli in 1803 and sunk four British warships inside the War of 1812. The British who watched cannonballs go away its sturdy sides gave the ship the nickname, "Old Ironsides." It could be the oldest commissioned warship afloat, now in Charleston.
Timber from here was used to construct the first Brooklyn Bridge.
St Simons offered a fantastic deep water river port ' protected from storms; the cut trees were floated around the river could ship
After the Civil War, with all the St. Simons economy devastated from the destruction from the plantation system, Anson Dodge and other wealthy New York merchants saw an excellent profit in southern lumber and organized the Georgia Land and Lumber Company. In 1868, they purchased large tracts of land and erected mills, through 1874 had determined St. Simons Island as the center of their operation. Gascoigne Bluff and Hamilton Plantation about the Frederica river were purchased. The mill became one in the three largest n the US, generating Dodge wealthy.
The story next turns to plantations, slavery, as well as the Civil war era.
Here, we undergo what would have been Hamilton Plantation and then there are still two slave cabins made of tabby that remain from that period.
Sherman's March towards the Sea destroyed every vestige of plantation life aside from four buildings, including these 2 slave cabins. They were cleaned up, he says.
James Spalding owned Retreat Plantation and tried out what might grow -- grapefruit, oranges, lemons, figs, dates, rice, indigo, cotton. Spalding brought seed from British Antigua ' long silky fibrous blossoms ' long stemmed Sea Island cotton ' which took over as the gold standard of cotton industry ' made owners wealthy
In 1860, the year before the start in the Civil War cotton through the South represented 57% of all exports from America for the rest of world.
"Cotton was truly king," Gardner says.
Slavery made cotton cultivation possible and Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin made cotton profitable again and that is what re-incentivized the slaveholders to cling to this particular inhumane institution.
This tiny island proved to possess a tremendous impact for the outcome of the Civil War.
The story commences with Pierce Butler, who owned Hampton Plantation on St. Simons. He is identified as "a hard man who had previously been notoriously tough on his slaves, but he a soft area for Fanny Kemble, an English actress, whom he married."
He brought Fanny here to Hampton Plantation where, for your first time, she came face to face with the reality of slavery.
Determined to switch things, she stood approximately her husband. Instead, Butler shipped her time for England and divorced her. But Fanny had kept a diary which she published as being a book, "Life over a Southern Plantation". It became a best seller inside the North, fueling the abolitionists' cause, and in Britain.
At some time the Civil War broke out, England was heavily dependent on Southern cotton and Queen Victoria was strongly influenced with the South (it bears noting that New York City has also been heavily dependent on southern cotton and sought to secede and set up an independent country so it could remain neutral and continue its commerce). England was staying out in the war until Fanny Kemble's book generated this type of outcry against Southern culture of slavery that Britain threw its support on the north. (I subsequently find out more about Fanny Kemble and Hampton Plantation with a free exhibit with the AW Jones Heritage Center at the Lighthouse Museum, a must-see).
By now the trolley has taken us on the small bridge and Gardner, our Trolley Tours guide, turns our focus on Ebo's Landing. "By 1803, importing slaves was against law but a Dutch slave ship from Nigeria with boatload of slaves locked below decks ran the barricade, emerged backside to that point, with Ebo tribesmen chained together. Recognizing they would be bound in slavery, they decided to walk from the other side ' all chained together - to their death. It was obviously a mass suicide, the one recorded case of mass suicide by slaves." Ebo's Landing still draws visitors from Nigeria who arrive at pay homage on their ancestors, he states.
After the Civil War, the plantations were cut up and the property divided among freed slaves. A good number of St Simons residents today are heirs towards the freed slaves, Gardner tells us.
We next travel past Masgrove Plantation, which Gardner says wasn't an plantation - the, 1400 acres were owned by heirs of RJ Reynolds and hosted President Carter (Reynolds also owned nearby Sapelo Island, another of those Georgia barrier islands, and also the mansion there).
These days, what might be comparable could be the state-of-the-art stables and a huge number of acres of property acquired at fire-sale prices during the economic collapse by Wayne Huizenga, the multi-millionaire founder of Waste Management.
Next we pass First African Baptist Church ' established 1859, 2 yrs before Civil War, which I gather was fairly progressive. "It was built by slaves for slaves, the type of material provided by slaveowners."
Now we come for the first from the three most photographed sites on St. Simons: Christ Church grounds (the other two include the Lighthouse and Avenue of Oaks).
Another theme runs through St. Simons: its connection to the Wesley Brothers, founders from the Methodist church, who were brought over to Georgia by James Oglethorpe.
Our tour has already taken us through Epworth through the Sea ( a Methodist Center named in honor of the boyhood home of John and Charles Wesley, founders of Methodism, that has been carved out in the Hamilton Plantation.
The complex carries a charming church measuring only used for weddings (some are booked 3 years in advance) along with a museum.
Now at Christ Church, the connection on the Wesleys continues.
Christ Church
At Christ Church, one in the most interesting historic sites on St. Simons, we get out in the trolley and go into church for commentary, then walk around cemetery.
Christ Church has been attended at service by more seated presidents (four) associated with a but National Cathedral in DC 'Coolidge, Wilson, Carter and Bush #1 (he honeymooned here and used to come for vacations; "It wasn't unusual to see George and Barbara Bush," Gardner informs us).
Christ Church was first built in 1820 by way of a plantation family in Civil War. Then Sherman's Armies descended on the barrier islands. The Church grounds were occupied through the famous Massachusetts 54 (the all-Black regiment featured in "Glory"). "They burned most of the pews for firewood; and housed their horses within the church," he says. "What still existed, lay fallow for 15-20 many became overgrown."
But within the late 1870s-80s, Anson Dodge (the New Yorker who created a fortune in lumber) ' stood a son Anson Green Phelps Dodge Jr., who became enthralled using the mystique of Wesley Brothers, the founders with the Methodist Church, who had preached to soldiers at Fort Frederica century before.
"He has an epiphany: he doesn't want to check out the father's lumber business but wants to a preacher inside style in the Wesley Brothers. His parents send him to Yale Divinity School where he meets Ellen Dodge (these were first cousins, the truth is). His parents will not want them to marry but Anson and Ellen elope to London, then have a honeymoon around the world as part of his boat (he was rich, in fact). When they get to India, Ellen gets sick, dies of cholera, but makes him promise he won't leave her. So he builds a crypt of lead plus 1884, sails back to St. Simons, places the crypt inside the church the shipwrights were building for him. They hadn't finished the altar so he builds the altar around the crypt so he keeps his promise never to leave her side.
"Anson later marries Anna Gould, granddaughter of James Gould, the main lighthouse keeper and contractor. But in 1898, at age 38, Anson dies of the heart attack. Anna dismantles the altar, removes the crypt and places Anson within the crypt regarding his first wife, re-seals it and moves it to the family plot, honoring his promise to his first wife where it's today, next to his mother's burial and about the other side, Anna's with their 3-year old son alongside her."
The church, which only seats 165, is actively used so may conduct possibly five services per day. A few with the pews in the 1820 church were saved. There are brass plates on the pews where Presidents have sat.
The original walls, built by shipwrights your famous heart of pine lumber, are extremely secure and impervious, they have got never been painted.
It can be a small, narrow church and one of the most picturesque and intimate I have ever seen. What makes it so stunning will be the large stained glass windows, installed at different times.
One is produced by Rebecca Dodge (Anson Greene Phelps Dodge Jr's mother), its keep is also a bust of her son as being a boy.
Another is a Tiffany window (although not signed because Tiffany didn't personally supervise set up .). But that is not one of the most valuable window - the most valuable is just to the right of it, for the reason that red sections are made of ruby.
The most intriguing in my experience, though, shows Indians, one of the few reminders in the original inhabitants on this island. One window portrays Anna Musgrove, whose mother was Creek and took over as the translator for Oglethorpe; she's given credit to the success of the British on the Spanish, and for her service, the King gave her 1400 acres of land (I'm not sure what happened to that land or her family, but I find out more on her when I visit Fort Frederica).
Most fascinating of all could be the cemetery.
We see where Anson, Ellen, Anna and their three-year old son are buried (he was trampled by horses).
Anna, who had been just decade younger than Anson's mother, Rebecca, yet outlived him, established the Anson Dodge Home for Boys, which operated 14 different homes; last one closed in 1956.
Gardner brings us to the King Family Plot, where he lets us know the story with the King family: King owned the greatest plantation for the Island. Before King, James Spalding owned the Retreat Plantation, which has been sold to the Page family. The Page family lost each of their children but Anna Matilda Page, who was sickly, also. In a last effort to save lots of her, they moved for this semi-tropical environment. Anna thrived, ended up managing the cotton plantation and married Thomas Butler King from Carolina. And because women's property reverted for the husband, he took it over though she still managed the plantation.
They stood a son, Henry Land Page King, called Lordy. It would have been a practice to bring up a slave child of same age as own child which was a boy named Neptune Small. The two were schooled together; every time they gave the son a horse, they gave Neptune one also. "They were master and slave but best of friends," our guide says.
"The Civil War breaks out, Lordy fights for Southern cause; he can have a manservant so he takes Neptune with him. They thought they'd wup those Yankees, and have a great adventure.
"At the Battle of Fredericksburg, Lordy is killed around the second day. Neptune Small only had to walk across towards the Union line to become free, but he chose to never. Instead, he waited for night and snuck out to find Lordy's body. He carried the body time for Retreat Plantation for burial.
'He could have had his freedom but he didn't want it," Gardner says. "Then, Neptune Small went in the market to find his other master ' he went along to Virginia to remain with Tyler King. Both went back alive from your war."
As a reward, King gave Neptune Small five acres of land ' on Southeast corner of plantation from the water ' today it's called Neptune Park, that beautiful pier and village.
On the crypt of Thomas Butler King (1800-1864) is written: "A profound statesman who laboured faithfully for the public good. A man gentle and true, a devoted husband and father. A kind master."
We keep on to where Retreat Plantation would have been.
It no more exists; instead the region is now owned by the Sea Island Company and is really a grand, exclusive resort with three world-class golf courses, Plantation Retreat, where PGA holds its classic. Every major tournament inside the 1920s was played here.
Here, we drive on the famous Avenue of Oaks ' planted 200 years ago, 20 feet apart, extending for quarter mile, today they form a thick canopy. You can't drive through anymore (the path is on either sides), but it is the most popular area for photographs, specifically wedding photos.
Anna Matilda Page King (1788-1859) planted 125 types of roses on Retreat Plantation.
She also built a hospital exclusively to the use with the slaves, Gardner says. "I never got word of that somewhere else."
As we leave the Retreat Plantation, we view the drainage ditch which played this kind of part in how the plantation survived a major hurricane. It was dug by slaves, overseen by Morris, a slave himself, who (I learn later in the Lighthouse exhibit) was rewarded which has a tankard and an offer of freedom but he turned along the offer of freedom because it did not include his wife and children, so he just received the tankard.
The drainage ditch dug by slaves remains to be working for drainage for the game.
The Lighthouse Trolley tour is pretty good - an excellent way to get oriented to the island and learn its stories. I get a lot of ideas of where to understand more about and I possess a greater appreciation for what I see.
I get from the trolley on the Neptune Park pier beautifully redone. It is in the end of an charming street of shops and eateries and connects to some paved path over the water large playground and gazebo and the to the lighthouse and museum, high is also a
I now understand the significance from the name, Neptune Park, named for that slave who stayed.
Lighthouse & Museum
The St. Simons Lighthouse is often a major attraction. The original lighthouse was integrated 1810 by James Gould of Massachusetts who became the first lighthouse keeper; his daughter, Anna, married Anson Green Dodge; it is a fixed 3rd order Fresnell Lens and you'll climb on the top, however, you have to arrive by 3:45 pm also it takes 35-40 minutes to accomplish the tour ($10/adult, $5/child admission, saintsimonslighthouse.org, 912-638-4666).
Before I arrived at St. Simons and Sapelo Island I had no idea the role these barrier islands played in colonial times in addition to their role in Civil War, and it adds to my Civil War Heritage tour which started for me in Tennessee, continued to Vicksburg, was adopted again at Darien and Sapelo Island (a neighboring Golden Isle), and now here. But on Sapelo and St. Simons, I more grasp the plantations, incorporate some inclining of slavery, and what happened after.
My education continues in a wonderful free exhibit with the just near the St. Simons Light Station, with the AW Jones Heritage Center.
The exhibit discusses the natural options that come with Little St. Simons, and the fact the region is growing because of the undammed Altamaha River.
Between 500 and 1500 AD, Native Americans made seasonal visits to the island in search of food, feasting on oysters.
The Spanish established missionaries but pulled back to St Augustine, Florida, because of raids by Native Americans allied using the English., and pirate attacks of 1683 & 1684. There is just one Indian site from that period that has become identified.
Private ownership in the island began with Samuel Auspourger of Zurich, Switzerland. In 1730, James Oglethorpe, founder of Georgia colony, appointed Auspouger to be engineer surveyor for new settlement at Fort Fredericka. In July 1739, Auspourger traveled to England to secure a royal grant of the 500-acre plantation and brought over two indentured servants.
In 1773, James Graham Reynolds from Savannah, got a grant for marshland, and established Five Pound plantation. His brother, John secured Hampton Plantation.
In 1774 Major Pierce Butler of South Carolina assembled a network of plantations, including Hampton Point and Five Pound, as well as a 1500 acre island for the Altamaha River, south of Darien, called 'Butler's Island'. He also acquired a remaining parcel of Little St. Simons Island.
Major Pierce Butler had arrive at America in 1767 where he met and married Mary Middleton, heiress a number of plantations. He resigned his commission to Britain and supported American independence. He would be a signer from the Constitution and was elected South Carolina's first US Senator, 1789.
By 1815, over 500 enslaved laborers worked Butlers' plantation, raising rice, long-style cotton, indigo, sugar cane and subsistence crops.
Butler was an absentee owner from 1802-1838, handing over management to Roswell King and the son Roswell King Jr. Apparently, their techniques were abominable: in 1803, there was 120 slaves living at Experiment under worst conditions of any Butler plantation. "Banishment to Five Pound was adopted as punishment."
Major Butler died 1822 plus 1836, in order to inherit his property, his grandsons Pierce and John Meese of Philadelphia, took the Butler surname. Pierce Meese Butler brought his wife, British actress Fanny Kemble and their two young daughters to his coastal plantation, 1838-39.
After seeing the horrors of slavery, Kemble became an ardent abolitionist; tensions rose with shod and non-shod and he packed her off back to England. They divorced in 1849. One with their daughters sided with Fanny as well as the other opted for Butler.
Pierce Meese Butler squandered his fortune but was saved from bankruptcy by 1859 sale of 436 slaves, a conference that became referred to as the "Weeping Time."
"Each person was examined and his or her value assessed. This was the preparation for what would be the biggest single sale of people in United States history," I subsequently learn after doing more research.
In 1863, 14 years after her marriage ended in divorce, with the American Civil War underway, Kemble published her diary, "Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation," which as I learned about the trolley tour, would have been a major factor in England supporting the North against the South, though England was dependent upon importing Southern cotton.
After the war, Pierce Butler returned to Butler Island along with his daughter Frances. Many of his former slaves were living there, and he arranged for the crooks to work as sharecroppers (itrrrs this that infuriates me a great deal about the Civil War, while you look back; the Southern planters would have transitioned to paid labor; on Sapelo honthom island, I learn, that the freed slaves were not entirely free to refuse becoming sharecroppers). Butler contracted malaria and died in August 1867, and Frances took on the management.
At the exhibit, I find out more on Morris, another hon thom island slave, who was simply became a hero. Morris had authority within the other slaves and was responsible for your levees, drainage ditches.
In advance in the 1804 hurricane which caused death and destruction, Morris created Hurricane House; 100 slaves survived the storm, earning the praise of the plantation manager, Roswell King. As an incentive, Major Butler offered Morris an engraved silver tankard and the freedom. 'But since freedom didn't include his wife and children, he made a decision to remain a slave.' Morris died in 1822.
Fort Frederica
The next day, I bike in the King & Prince Resort around the south end in the island, on paved bike paths that take me pass a tabby slave cabin (now a quaint shop), in the very road that Oglethorpe built well as over which Spanish soldiers marched to address Fort Frederica before these were stopped by Bloody Marsh, changing the tide of history, and bike to the fort itself.
A national monument managed with the National Park Service, this is really a vast 55-acre archeological park - - of the once was considered one of Georgia's finest colonial settlements.
Here you really are stepping back to time, a lot more than 100 years ahead of the Civil War, on the earliest colonial days.
You walk down the grassy boulevards and streets, alongside the excavations from the foundations of buildings and homes its keep are superb historical markers with descriptions, artwork and even artifacts, to help you really visualize what this colonial town was like.
Now it really is more like a ghost town. Once one from the most populated settlements of colonial times, this complete, remarkable town was largely destroyed inside the Great Town Fire of 1758.
I come to the remains with the house with the woman I learned about in Christ Church your day before' and that very familiarity sparks my interest. In 1743, Mary Musgrove Matthews, James Oglethorpe's Indian interpreter, lived with this lot ' "a good house of tabby." She was obviously a daughter of the white trader and Creek Indian mother and also the niece of an Creek Indian King. She left the Indian tribe when she was decade old to obtain Christian education in South Carolina. A skilled interpreter, negotiator and trader, she served as an interpreter for 10 years, and helped Oglethorpe win the friendship and support of Indians, so vital in the ultimate defeat of the Spanish.
I go to the house built by Primrose Maxwell, a Lieutenant in Oglethorpe regiment, who took part inside 1740 expedition against Spanish at St Augustine and in addition served as pall bearer at funeral from the great Indian leader, Tomechichi (that's the part that interested me)
I walk down Broad Street - they've got the street markers in order to easily imagine how a streets were laid out; drawings complete the picture of the the house could have looked like, individuals, you can find quotes from diaries.
Here I come upon the house that belonged to Patrick and Priscilla Houston. Patrick inherited the title of Baronnet and was appointed towards the Royal Council of Georgia. One of their six of these children, John, who might have been born with this site, served being a delegate to Continental Congress and then was elected governor of Georgia.
I see and then there would have been a public bakery ' established in 1736 by Oglethorpe in the rather ingenious program to advertise the welfare and security in the community. Oglethorpe bought off time of an indentured servant who was simply a baker together him bake for that whole colony. The colonists "gave him their allowance of flour and that he returned to them a similar weight in bread, the real difference made by water and salt, his gain."
Finally I come for the remains from the fort, itself, and discover how Oglethorpe planned the defense.
(You can take advantage of an audio tour; you can actually spend several hours here and you can find special tours and programs.)
There can be a marker here, also: accompanying James Oglethorpe to this island in 1736 were John and Charles Wesley, leaders in evangelical movement and founders of Methodist church, who preached towards the soldiers and settlers at Fort Frederica. 'The World is my parish.'
It can be a remarkable setting - open, with live oaks, so peaceful, nevertheless with these wonderful remnants of structures - you can actually spend hours here.
A church bell tolls at 11 am for this Sunday morning. I know that Christ Church is going to be filling with worshippers.
I see the Old Burial Ground and where Military Road starts.
It's also time to me to leave. So much of St. Simons history comes full circle, equally as my ride.
The biking is absolutely marvelous, and brings that you scenes and sites you do not have noticed should you go by car.
The path takes me by way of a slave cabin which has become turned into a quaint shop. I am always fascinated from the "happy face" they seem to put on slavery, in cases like this, the historical marker, with names which can be now familiar in my opinion: "Tabby slave cabin of Retreat plantation, now Sea Island Golf Course, was certainly one of 8 cabins hat stood of this type, generally known as New Field. The slaves who lived here tilled the Sea Island cotton fields nearby. Each of those cabins was 48 x 18 ft, with a partition along with a chimney in the center they stood about 300 feet apart and were shaded by beautiful live oak trees Retreat Plantation, originally the property with the Spalding family, was sold to Major William Page whose daughter, Anna Matilda Page, married hon thom island. Thomas Butler King, MC."
Ah, the cabin was shaded by live oak trees. How charming.
Top 10 Things to Do on St. Simons
The Lighthouse Trolleys tour (912-638-3333,
Christ Church (dating from 1884, includes a Tiffany stained glass window, and cemetery that is utterly fascinating, christchurchfrederica.org),
Ft. Frederica National Monument, where one can see ongoing archeology from the colonial-era community (nps.gov/fofr).
St. Simons Island Lighthouse (which you can climb; that one dates from 1872) and Maritime museum and AW Jones Heritage Center (saintsimonslighthouse.org)
Neptune Park Pier village (the waterfront park is marvelous and there can be a new Fun Zone playground), which can be a block-long "downtown" of shops and restaurants (the island has more than 20 galleries and antique shops);
St Simons Island 'Island Playhouse" theatre and Library",
Historic sites including Bloody Marsh,
Bike this tropical isle - a bike path connects most from the major attractions(Ocean Motion, 800-669-5215,
Kayak (a two-hour dolphin nature tour is $45, Ocean Motion, 1300 Ocean Blvd, St Simons, 800-669-5215)
Golf
Stroll the beach
Stay of all time: The King and Prince Beach & Golf Resort, 201 Arnold Road, St. Simons Island, GA 31522, 912-638-3631, also historichotels.org.
For visitor planning information: Golden Isles Georgia, 800-933-2627, Goldenisles.com.
See also:
King & Prince Resort in Georgia's Golden Isles Has Storied Past, Playful Present and slideshow
Karen Rubin, National Eclectic Travel Examiner
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