Open Water
Jekyll’s St. Andrews Beach was the first—and for years, only— section of Georgia coast accessible to African Americans By Rebecca Burns In 1948‚ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Roy Sprigle traveled undercover through the South to report on life under Jim Crow. Three thousand miles into his…
Dawn of the Condo
One of the nation’s first condominiums is still a genteel retreat By Jeanée Ledoux The French name means “worry-free.” That’s just how the early owners of Sans Souci, including the banker J. P. Morgan, intended to spend their winter getaways on Jekyll Island. In 1896,…
A Long-Distance Call for the Ages
How Jekyll Island made telephone history By Scott Freeman It took 1,100 miles of copper cable strung up specifically for the occasion, but AT&T president Theodore Vail was determined to be part of the first coast-to-coast telephone call in U.S. history. Considered the father of…
The Great Copper Pot
How Georgia’s first brewery was born By Rebecca Burns In March 1733, merchant Samuel Eveleigh journeyed from Charleston (then Charles Town) to the fledgling colony of Georgia and was impressed by residents’ temperance under the leadership of James Oglethorpe. “I never saw one of his…
Birth of the Fed
The secret expedition that formed America’s central bank By Scott Freeman Just before Thanksgiving in 1910, U.S. senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island invited six members of America’s banking elite to a covert retreat on Jekyll Island. This was before the first transcontinental call (placed…
Golf Goes Modern
In 1924, pivotal tests conducted on Jekyll Island shaped the future of the sport By Jennifer Senator Jekyll Island landed on the map as a golfing destination with the 1899 opening of its first golf course. The elite Jekyll Island Club—whose members included J.P. Morgan…