The historic district features numerous impressive and ambitious buildings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

These beaches are characterized by another tidal creek emptying into St. Simons Sound and a boneyard of pine and water oak tree roots.

Tabby was an indigenous material developed along the coast that was formed from crushed oyster shells, lime and water to make a kind of cement.

The multiple parallel dunes on the southernmost tip are a result of sand from the eroding north beaches traveling southward and being deposited in a recurved spit.

In January 2018 a reporter announced finding wreckage in mud in the Mobile River, which a team of archeologists had affirmed may be the ruins of the Clotilda.

The Wanderer was built in Setauket, New York as a pleasure boat, but it was acquired by Southerners who opposed the prohibition on the Atlantic slave trade.

[8] After a six-week voyage in which more than 100 slaves died, on November 28, 1858, The Wanderer anchored near the southern portion of Jekyll Island.

The centerpiece of the grounds is the large Jekyll Island Club Hotel, a two-winged structure that contains numerous suites for rental.

Thirty-three buildings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries surround the hotel; many are the elaborate mansion-sized "cottages" built by the rich.

[11] Tram tours originate from the Jekyll Island Museum located on Stable Road directly across from the historic district.

In the late 17th century the Guale and the Mocama were driven out of what is now Georgia by attacks from French pirates and from native allies of the English in the Province of Carolina.

These settlers were said to also have cultivated the three sisters: squash and pumpkins, beans, and corn (maize); as well as sunflowers and tobacco, which was used for many ritual purposes and celebrations.

Later Juan Ponce de León was appointed as the civil governor of this and Spain's other claimed North American territories.

[16] In 1562 French explorer Jean Ribault claimed the island for France and renamed it as Ille de la Somme.

After the Westo invasion on the mainland, they began destroying the missions and slaying the Spanish priests, traveling south along the coast.

In 1663–65, England established grants to land stretching southward from their Jamestown colony to an area below St. Augustine, Florida.

In the late 1730s, General Oglethorpe appointed William Horton to set up a military post in the area to protect Fort Frederica on St Simon's Island.

At his residence, Horton established a plantation that was able to supply the population at Frederica with beef and corn; he depended on the labor of enslaved African Americans.

A mixture of lime, crushed oyster shells, and water, this strong building material has withstood the test of time throughout the Sea Islands.

Members and their families enjoyed activities such as biking, hunting, horseback riding, and tennis, and frequented the north beaches.

At the end of November 1910, Senator Nelson W. Aldrich and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury A. Piatt Andrew invited five of the country's leading financiers (Frank Vanderlip, Henry P. Davison, Arthur Shelton, Benjamin Strong, and Paul Warburg) to a private meeting at the Jekyll Island Club to develop recommendations for a central banking system that could respond to financial panics like the Panic of 1907.

[20] They produced a plan for fifteen self-governing branches distributed over the country, overseen by a national commission that would coordinate policy.

The Jekyll Island meeting was not disclosed until 1930, when Senator Carter Glass's claim of credit for the Federal Reserve's structure prompted rebuttals from Warburg and other banking experts.

[21] Under the administration of Governor Melvin E. Thompson, the state of Georgia gained control of Jekyll Island on October 6, 1947, for $675,000.

Black residents of Brunswick petitioned the state for access‚ and in 1950‚ a portion of southern Jekyll‚ renamed St. Andrews Beach‚ was designated for blacks‚ becoming the first public beach in Georgia accessible to African Americans.

In an extension of the lease-convict system, compared to slavery in its abuses, the mostly African-American prisoners performed the manual labor needed to prepare the island for public use.

Upon completion of the six-year causeway project and erection of the drawbridge on December 11, 1954, Jekyll Island officially re-opened for public use.

In 2007 it selected Linger Longer Communities LLC (through a competitive process) as its private partner to redevelop a portion of the Island.

It includes a renovated Convention Center, with construction of a mixed-use public Beach Village to increase the number and variety of attractions nearby.

By legislative mandate, sixty-five percent of the island is and will remain in a mostly natural state (including parks and picnic areas).