Cumberland Island constitutes the westernmost point of shoreline on the Atlantic Ocean in the United States.

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.

There are white-tailed deer, squirrels, raccoons, nine-banded armadillos, wild boars, feral hogs, American alligators, as well as many marshland inhabitants.

An additional mission, San Phelipe, was relocated from the North Newport River to the northern end of Cumberland from 1670–1684.

Historical records indicate that until 1681, there were approximately 300 natives and several Spanish missionary priests living on Cumberland Island.

An attack in 1684 by a pirate known to the Spanish as Thomas Jingle led to the final abandonment of the island by the Spaniards.

[1]: 67–68 The Revolutionary War hero Nathanael Greene founded most of southern Cumberland Island as a result of a business deal used to finance the army.

His wife, Catharine Littlefield Greene, remarried Phineas Miller ten years later; and they built a huge, four-story tabby mansion on top of a Native American shell mound.

Dungeness was the site of many special social galas, where statesmen and military leaders enjoyed the Millers' hospitality.

According to national oral history, live oak wood from the island was used to build the USS Constitution, "Old Ironsides", in the 1790s.

In 1818, an ill General "Lighthorse" Harry Lee, a Revolutionary War hero and old friend of Catharine Greene, was returning from the West Indies when he asked to be taken to Dungeness.

In 1913, the body of Harry Lee was reinterred at Lexington, Virginia, to lie beside his famous son, but his gravestone was left on Cumberland Island.

These include: In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, small farmers settled on the north end of the island.

One of these pilots, James Clubb, directed the Wanderer (the last ship to bring slaves from Africa to the United States) to nearby Jekyll Island in 1858.

These north end families owned some slaves, and during the Civil War, most of these people moved to the mainland when Union forces occupied the island.

It was a residential area for black workers, as Georgia had passed laws requiring racial segregation of housing and public facilities.

The most prosperous hotel was located in the High Point area and attracted guests who belonged to the rising middle class.

[8] 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.

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.

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.

Fraser met with conservationist and then Sierra Club executive director, David Brower, on the island to discuss how to develop the area.

[12] 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.

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.

Since the national seashore was established, a Navy nuclear submarine base has been built on the mainland opposite, which requires frequent dredging to the river so that it will be deep enough.