Jekyll Island

Jekyll Island, one of Georgia's Golden Isles barrier islands, was the winter retreat of some of the wealthiest American families in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Morgans, who together formed the exclusive Jekyll Island Club. The 240-acre historic district preserves more than 30 of their Gilded Age cottages and the central Clubhouse, now operated as a hotel. The island's northern end supports the Driftwood Beach, where bleached skeletal trees stand in the surf — one of the most recognized natural photography subjects on the Georgia coast.