Cumberland Island

Cumberland Island, in the southeastern United States, is the largest of the Sea Islands of Georgia. The long-staple Sea Island cotton was first grown here by a local family, the Millers, who helped Eli Whitney develop the cotton gin. With its unusual range of wildlife, the island has been declared a National Seashore. Little Cumberland Island is connected to the main island by a marsh.

Geography

Cumberland Island forms part of Camden County, Georgia (30°51′N, 81°27′W). Cumberland Island constitutes the westernmost point of shoreline on the Atlantic Ocean in the United States. The island is long, with an area of 36,415 acres (147.37 km<sup>2</sup> or 56.90 square miles), including of marsh, mudflats, and tidal creeks. There is no bridge to the island; it is reached by the Cumberland Ferry from St. Marys.

Ecology

right|thumb|Marsh on Cumberland Island

The island has three major ecosystem regions. Along the western edge of the island there are large areas of salt marshes. One will also see gnarled live oak trees covered with Spanish moss and the palmetto plants at the edge of Cumberland's dense maritime forest. Cumberland Island's most famous ecosystem is its beach, which stretches over . The island is home to many native animals, as well as non-native species. There are white-tailed deer, squirrels, raccoons, nine-banded armadillos, wild boars, feral hogs, American alligators, as well as many marshland inhabitants. It is also famous for its feral horses, which roam free on the island.

History

Native American settlement

The first inhabitants were indigenous peoples who settled there as early as 4,000 years ago. Later inhabitants participated in the Savannah archaeological culture and spoke the Timucua language. Its inhabitants were part of the Mocama, a Timucua group who spoke the Mocama dialect. In the 17th century the island and the adjacent coast were controlled by the Tacatacuru chiefdom. The main village, known as Tacatacuru, was located towards the southern end of the island; during the time of European colonization, the Spanish recorded the names of at least six more villages on the island, and eleven more were located on the mainland.

Colonial settlement

During the 16th and 17th centuries, Cumberland Island was part of the Mocama missionary province of Spanish Florida. When the Spanish arrived in the 1550s, they named the island San Pedro. They built a garrison and mission, San Pedro de Mocama, in 1603.

In the 1760s, the island was divided into royal grants but saw little activity. When naturalist William Bartram visited the island in 1774, the island was mostly uninhabited. The Millers' Dungeness burned down in 1866.

Former slaves and their descendants continued to live on the island after the Civil War. According to historian Mary Bullard, one community existed in the Brick Hill area of the island between 1862 and 1891. Many of these freedmen were farmers. In the 1880s, another community formed at what is now called "The Settlement". It was a residential area for black workers, as Georgia had passed laws requiring racial segregation of housing and public facilities. The First African Baptist Church, established in The Settlement in 1893, was rebuilt in the 1930s. It is one of the few remaining structures of this community.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, innkeeping was the primary business on the north end. The most prosperous hotel was located in the High Point area and attracted guests who belonged to the rising middle class. Visitors arrived on steamboats and enjoyed activities such as fishing, hunting, and going to the beach. At the height of the innkeeping era in the 1890s, guests numbered around 750. Black residents of the north end staffed the hotel: they served as waiters, cooks, laundresses, and drivers of the horse-drawn trolleys that transported guests. Hotel Cumberland at High Point was sold in 1918 and became a private club. The Candler family of Atlanta, associated with Coca-Cola, owned part of the north end.

John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette were married on Cumberland Island in 1996, in the First African Baptist Church with their reception taking place at the historic Greyfield Inn. While they filled the church's eight pews with friends and family, no media were permitted at the event.

Present-day conservation

thumb|Looking North from Dungeness runway. [[Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base can be seen in the upper left.]]

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In 1954, some of the members of the Carnegie family invited the National Park Service to the island to assess its suitability as a National Seashore. In 1955, the National Park Service named Cumberland Island as one of the most significant natural areas in the United States and plans got underway to secure it. Simultaneously, the State of Georgia was working on plans to secure the island as a state park. Plans to create a National Seashore were complicated when, in October 1968, Carnegie descendants sold three thousand acres of the island to real estate developer Charles Fraser, who had developed part of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Fraser met with conservationist and then Sierra Club executive director, David Brower, on the island to discuss how to develop the area. This meeting and discussions between Fraser and Brower were documented in one part of the book Encounters with the Archdruid by John McPhee who traveled with Fraser and Brower as they toured Cumberland Island. Brower pushed for a 90/10 split, with 90% of the land to remain undeveloped.

However, the thought of any additional development on the island beyond the structures already erected by the Carnegies and Sam Candler, who also owned part of the island, caused activists, politicians, members of the Carnegie and Candler families, and a number of organizations, including the Georgia Conservancy and the Sierra Club, to band together and push Fraser to sell to the National Park Foundation. They, along with others, also helped push a bill through the US Congress that established Cumberland Island as a national seashore. The bill was signed by President Richard Nixon on October 23, 1972. The Carnegie family sold the island to the federal government. With donations from the Mellon Foundation, Cumberland Island became a unit of the National Park Service, designated Cumberland Island National Seashore.

Current land ownership

Cumberland Island is actually two islands—the island proper and Little Cumberland Island—connected by a marsh. Little Cumberland is a separate island and not a part of Cumberland Island. As are the private properties on Cumberland Island, Little Cumberland Island has been maintained with a nature and conservation mission for over 60 years. Historically, portions of Cumberland Island remain in private hands. Large areas were deeded to the National Parks Foundation by members or heirs of the Carnegie family in 1971. Other lands in private ownership were purchased with funds provided by the Mellon Foundation and Congress, and in 1972 Cumberland Island was designated a national seashore. A small number of property owners, principally ones who preserved the island and protected it from massive commercial development, still own their homes and other private property on the southern, western and northern regions of the island. Some, however, have sold their property to the National Park Service (NPS), with an agreement that retains their ownership and full property rights during their lifetime. Eventually, their property will be owned by the National Park Service.