What was once a lifeline to Jekyll is now all but gone.
BY JOSH GREENE
Today, all that remains of a crucial part of Jekyll Island’s past are a few timeworn concrete piers, some tabby walls, and an old capstan winch, a table-sized tool with ropes used for pulling fanciful boats and launches from the water. These ruins were once part of a transportation hub as critical to Jekyll Island as the Causeway and airport are today.
The Jekyll Island Club Boat House that stood in what today is Riverview Park—situated just south of the Historic District, near the three-way stop where Stable Road meets Riverview Drive—once housed the boats of Jekyll’s well-heeled citizenry. These vessels were their lifeline to mainland Georgia throughout the Club Era (1886-1942), long before the Causeway bridge was built. A more recent addition to the park—a sturdy historical marker from the 1950s pays homage to the boat house’s significance.
For some Club members and their guests, arriving at the island meant anchoring their private yachts in Jekyll Creek’s deep channel and taking smaller vessels to shore. Others traveled by plush private railcars to the bustling port of Brunswick. From there, ferry boat captains transported guests to and from Jekyll aboard one of several Club-owned steam vessels. Barges towed behind the ferries carried baggage, supplies, and even livestock. The first automobile on island arrived by barge in 1900.
The first Club-owned steam vessel to Jekyll was the circa-1887 Howland, named for Club president Judge Henry Elias Howland. Its replacement, the 84-foot Jekyl Island (that’s how the word often was spelled at the time), was stored in the boat house during the summer. Several smaller boats the Hattie, the Kitty, and the Sylvia among them were used in the summer offseason and stored in the boat house through winter.
Andrea Marroquin, curator of Mosaic, Jekyll Island Museum, says the boat house was strategically placed south of what is now the Historic District so as not to block the water vistas treasured by the likes of Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Pulitzers. The boat house’s creek-side positioning may have helped buffer it from storms, too, though a wharf-wrecking hurricane of 1898 proved the area wasn’t immune.
The advent of the Jekyll Creek Bridge in the 1950s made the island accessible by car, and the custom of arriving by water faded like the Club itself (though ferry service did continue during the island’s early days as a state park). What remains undocumented is when the boat house was built and when it either crumbled or was demolished. “We simply know that it was standing by 1916, based on [archival] photos,” Marroquin says.
The location of the boat house isn’t quite as tucked away as it once was. But that’s not all bad. A wayside panel positioned there helps today’s Jekyll explorers interpret the ruins that remain. “It used to be a bit more off the beaten path,” says Marroquin, “but now that Riverview Park is there, with parking, pathways, and picnic tables, it’s easier for guests to discover.”
