Cumberland Island, the Island saved by the Carnegie Family May 31st – June 3rd

Cumberland Island, the Island saved by the Carnegie Family May 31^st – June 3^rd

We went on a van tour guided by Robin Barker, who is a National Park Service Ranger on Cumberland Island.  The tour took all day, but it was a tour that showed me the beauty of Cumberland Island that would not be here today if it was not for the generosity of the Carnegie family.  After we visited the Stafford cemetery we visited Plum Orchard, which is a mansion built as a winter home for George Carnegie around the turn of the 20^th century.  The rest of our day consisted of visiting the First African American Baptist Church, where JFK Jr. was married and learning about the island’s ecology, and how harmful the horses are to the island’s ecosystem. 

As I stepped off the ferry onto Cumberland Island it was like I was stepping back in time as an explorer landing on the shores of America for the first time.  Our tour guide Robin Barker told us that Cumberland Island was once a plantation island that thrived on indigo and cotton, and after the Civil War massive plantations faded away.  Cumberland Island would never come back to its glory as a plantation island managed by Robert Stafford.  According to John McPhee in Encounters With The Archdruid (1971) “at the outbreak of the Civil War, the sea islands were abandoned… nearly all of Cumberland was bought by a Carnegie - Andrew’s brother Thomas,” and as a result of Thomas Carnegie’s purchase of 90% of Cumberland Island Thomas Carnegie worked to restore the natural beauty of the island (99).  Thomas Carnegie restored Cumberland Island’s beauty by letting the natural vegetation of the island regrow on the plantation fields.  Thomas Carnegie, in my opinion, is one of the earliest conversationalists who wanted to preserve the.  “Not all Carnegies could afford to hold land anymore, began to move toward finding a way to keep the island from being developed,” and some of the Thomas Carnegie descendants sold “three thousand acres of Cumberland Island to Charles E. Fraser” (99).  Charles Fraser is credited for helping purchase and develop Hilton Head and Kiawah Island into beach resort communities; however, he was swayed by David Bower to make Cumberland Island a National Seashore.  Now Cumberland Island is not the new Hilton Head, but instead it is a National Park that can be visited by the public to enjoy a primitive environment.      

When I was on the ferry leaving Cumberland Island I knew that I was leaving one of America’s most preserved islands that could have been the next Hilton Head Island.  The history and ecology of Cumberland Island is one of a kind that no place in the United States can match.  What other place in America has a history of cotton plantations, the Carnegies, and JFK Jr’s secret wedding?  As an Eagle Scout I enjoy backpacking in some of the most beautiful places in the country, and Cumberland Island has made the top of my favorite places I visited.  My visit to Cumberland Island was an amazing experience that has given me a new perspective on preserving our nation’s beauty.  I hope to come back to Cumberland Island someday to see an island that could have been the next Hilton Head Island, but it instead stays untouched by corporate chain hotels to remain a hidden preserved treasure of southern Georgia.