Checking Out the Club--February 21

Lazy morning. Sit around camp, read, play the piano, update the blog. It’s cold out there. Warms up in the PM so we get the bikes off the back and ride to the historic districts. Takes a bit to locate the History Museum, which is located in the old stables for the Jekyll Island Club. Good video. Interesting exhibits. The Club was formed by NewYork and Chicago moneyed folks who wanted a winter retreat. Most had homes in Newport for the summer, Florida wasn’t viable yet (this was the 1880’s), so they bought Jekyll Island for the princely sum of $125,000. They built the club house for something like $65,000, divided the area around the clubhouse into 50 lots, and started building ‘cottages’. Access to the island was by boat; a land route wouldn’t’ be built until the 1950’s.

Most people ate their meals in the club, there was housing for extra servants and chauffeurs, there was lots of island left over for golf and croquet and hunting (it was originally designated a hunting club but hunting decline). By the 1940’s the Club was in dire shape; the depression had hit them hard, Florida was THE place to go, and no one wss interested in putting money into the Club. The State of Georgia took it by eminent domain and made it a state park. They have gradually renovated a few of the ‘cottages’, the Clubhouse, which had a number of additions over the years, is now a hotel run by Radisson, and it is all quite swish. We stop for a drink in the bar and sink into soft leather chairs. Despite the cold there are people (little type people) in the swimming pool.

At night we have a campfire, using up all of our wood we have purchased and scarfed up.