Committed to Jekyll Island

At

Dear friends,

The “off” season is my favorite time on Jekyll Island. The temperature cools, but it is still warm enough to enjoy the beach and ride my bike. The busyness of summer relaxes into a slower rhythm. Even the land reflects the shift. The surrounding marshes positively light up as green turns to gold, while the native muhly grass adds vibrant pinks and purples to the glowing landscape.

All year, I look forward to the color change that gives the Golden Isles their name. It’s easy to see why the poet Sidney Lanier paid tribute, in his famous ode, to “the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.”

It’s not just nature that reflects the season. Around the island, our history team decks the millionaires’ cottages in holiday finery, while our roads and grounds crew hangs more than 30,000 twinkling lights on curling live oak limbs. The Jekyll Island Skating Village, the only oceanfront rink in the state, welcomes “ice” skaters of all experience levels, and movie lovers enjoy seasonal favorites on the big outdoor screen in Beach Village. In January, our “Beach Buddies” hide glass treasures around the island for our annual two-month Island Treasures hunt.

The off-season is the perfect time to enjoy a host of activities, or to simply experience the quiet beauty of Jekyll Island. Whichever you choose, I hope to see you around Jekyll real soon.

Jones Hooks

Executive Director, Jekyll Island Authority

Jekyll Island Authority Board Of

Powers of Attention

Not long ago I went for a jog on a riverside trail outside Atlanta. At the sound of a high-pitched chirp, I reached for the phone in my pocket— and pulled it halfway out before realizing I’d heard a bird.

This depressing moment surfaced in my memory as I read about Jekyll Island artisan Lydia Thompson, profiled on page 29. A printmaker whose primary subject is birds, Thompson is exceptionally tuned in to the world around her—watching, listening, honing senses we screen junkies have all but lost. And though she possesses an artist’s imaginative spirit, she’s an expert in the field of ornithology—a true naturalist in the tradition of John James Audubon.

Among Jekyll fauna, humans are well established. A drive around the island reveals layers of architectural history, from pre-Colonial tabby ruins to brightly colored midcentury ranches (“Retro Retreats,” page 62). But I’m always struck by how the dwellings give way to the forest, a fringe of dense greenery hinting at mysteries contained within. Jekyll has some 2,000 acres of forest, and they house a world invisible to even the most attentive observer.

It took cameras strapped to trees, in fact, to confirm that a mysterious set of paw prints belonged to bobcats, new arrivals on the island as of 2014 (“Alpha Cats,” page 34). Last year those same cameras captured bobcat kittens and, with them, the imagination of regional media. But few Jekyll visitors will ever lay eyes on the animal in the flesh.

Novice naturalists may find more reward in combing the beach for interesting seashells, which hold their own mysteries. Turn to page 44 for a guide to doing just that. In fall and winter, the humans have scattered, and cooler weather invites idle strolling. It’s a perfect time to look up to the skies or down at the surf—or anywhere really, except at your phone.

Elizabeth Florio Editor

1 Kristin Karch is an award-winning photographer whose work is heavily based on the South and familial bonds. She graduated from the University of Georgia’s Lamar

Dodd School of Art in 2015, and her work has already appeared in numerous publications, including Garden & Gun, Wine Spectator and Huffington Post. A native Georgian, she makes an effort to travel whenever possible but continues to return to the South, where she finds her greatest sense of home and inspiration.

2 Jeanée Ledoux is an Atlanta-based writer and editor with a passion for good design and its creators. She contributes to magazines such as Dwell Domino, and Travel & Leisure. When she’s not busy running her freelance business, FinelyCrafted.net, she’s probably scouring a vintage store for midcentury treasures, doing yoga, or playing fetch with her blind dog.

Claim Your Perfect Campsite

158 spots for your tent or RV, 18 wooded acres, and all the s’mores you can eat.

jekylli slan d.com/campground

Holly Jolly Jekyll

Nov. 18, 2017–Jan. 7, 2018

Christmas is always magical on Jekyll, but this year’s celebration will be a bit more flavorful thanks to Merry Shrimpmas a one-time-only mashup of the Shrimp & Grits Festival—canceled in September due to Hurricane Irma—and the annual Tree Lighting. On November 24 and 25, restaurants from around the region will show off their shrimp-and-grits renditions while attendees enjoy an artists’ market, story time with Santa, fireworks, and even snow. The fun culminates Saturday evening when the great tree is set aglow.

Island Treasures

Jan. 1–Feb. 28, 2018

This two-month treasure hunt for colorful, handcrafted glass orbs is a nod to the old glass floats used in fishing nets, once the prize of beachcombers.

Bluegrass Festival

Jan. 4–6, 2018

This traveling fest brings three days of jamming to the Jekyll Island Convention Center.

Jekyll Island

Marathon & 10K

Jan. 14, 2018

The inaugural event— the only marathon on a Georgia barrier island— showcases Jekyll’s evershifting landscape.

Whiskey, Wine & Wildlife

Feb. 8–11, 2018

Caffeine & Octane at the Beach

March 16–18, 2018

Atlanta’s cars-and-coffee series heads to the beach, where enthusiasts show off their vehicles and enjoy special events like a scenic motorcycle ride.

Easter Egg Stroll

March 24, 2018

Jekyll’s National Historic Landmark District hosts a bonnet parade, petting farm, and continually replenished egg hunt.

Shell-e-brate

April 5–6, 2018

Like-minded conservation groups from around the region mark Earth Day with a festival on the Georgia Sea Turtle Center grounds.

Jekyll Book Festival

April 7, 2018

Jekyll Comic Con

Throughout the season, take a spin on an oceanfront skating rink. Tour Victorian cottages arrayed in holiday splendor. Shop for gifts at Goodyear Cottage’s Merry Artists’ Show and Sale Deck out your golf cart (or just join the fun) in the Holly Jolly Jekyll Parade See the full roster of events at jekyllisland.com/holidays Visit

Dec. 9–10, 2017

Cosplaying superheroes and mythical characters take over the Jekyll Island Convention Center.

The series of culinary celebrations includes a whiskey dinner, a wine cruise, and an afternoon of tastings under the tent.

Jekyll Island Arts Association Arts Festival

March 9–11, 2018

This long-running festival showcases toptier work from 400-plus painters, potters, weavers, woodworkers, and more.

The inaugural event will bring book signings and author lectures to Beach Village, with an emphasis on children’s and young adult lit.

Turtle Crawl Weekend

May 11–13, 2018

Jekyll is the serene setting for four competitive races—a 5K, a 10K, and two triathlons—benefiting the Georgia Sea Turtle Center.

In 1955, a couple from Decatur, Georgia, visited Jekyll Island and fell under the spell of an abandoned historic cottage called Villa Ospo. Entranced by its decaying grandeur and striking architecture, Dewey and Grace Scarboro signed a long-term lease with the state. When they returned to their newly acquired property, they were greeted by a huge rattlesnake in a grate at the entryway. The flooded basement was home to a knot of water moccasins and cottonmouths.

Once they’d banished the serpents, the Scarboros began restoration of the weather-rotted manse, the 1920s vacation home of Walter Jennings, a former Standard Oil director. Dewey, a real estate developer and former Georgia Tech football star, half-joked

Villa Ospo

The home of a Roaring Twenties tycoon embodies the welcoming spirit of past owners

BY REBECCA BURNS

in 1958 to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter that he’d erected entire subdivisions faster than it took to restore the moldering stucco and crumbling woodwork of Villa Ospo.

Dewey scoured New Orleans for lavish antiques, and Grace, an artist, obsessed over the Spanish Eclectic exterior. They transformed the property, called Ospo after the original Native American name of the island, into a lavish showplace and for several years operated it as an attraction. Guests could sleep in a bed rumored to have once belonged to Napoleon’s second wife.

The luxe furnishings wowed 1950s visitors but were not in keeping with the original decor of the home, which Jennings built as a winter getaway for his family in 1927. Like many of the Northern industrial tycoons who built retreats on Jekyll, the Jennings embraced a relaxed style. “They would have been comfortable here, but [the house] was not furnished in the same style as their mansions up North,” says Andrea Marroquin, curator of the Jekyll Island Museum.

But like the Scarboros, the Jennings filled the home with people. Walter and his wife, Jean, were deeply involved with the Jekyll Island Club and made it a mission to greet newcomers and visitors to the island, turning Villa Ospo into an informal welcome center.

The club members considered themselves a close-knit family, and in the case of Jennings, that was quite literal; his three sisters were also members. In 1927, just a year after joining the club, Jennings assumed the club presidency following the death of his brother-in-law, Dr. Walter James.

Designed by John Russell Pope, architect of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., Villa Ospo is one of the most modern structures in the island’s National Historic Landmark District, reflecting the Roaring Twenties. The building contains ten bedrooms, five bathrooms, and a magnificent great room. As with a good vacation home, there’s a seamless connection between indoors and out. The grounds include a cypress-lined alley and a secret garden with a lily pond. A notable feature: historic Jekyll’s only garage. Jennings and fel- low auto enthusiasts would bring their cars on their yachts, or send them by train to be brought out by barge. Like the furnishings, the island cars were comfortable. “They’d bring their beaters so they could drive them around on the beach,” says Marroquin.

Jennings’s enthusiasm for driving led to his death just six years after the villa was completed. A collision with another motorist left him battered and weak and contributed to a fatal heart attack.

Over the years, visitors to Villa Ospo have claimed encounters with Walter and Jean Jennings: a creak here, a rumble there, the scents of cigar and perfume. For curator Marroquin, it’s a different kind of spirit that echoes in the mansion, part of which now operates as a special events facility and is outfitted with period fixtures in keeping with the original decor. “There is a real openness and welcoming spirt of the house,” she says.

OSPO TODAY Villa Ospo houses the offices of the Jekyll Island Foundation. The home and grounds can be rented for special events through the Jekyll Island Museum (call 912-635-4168 or visit jekyllisland.com/villaospo).

“It’s a photographer’s dream,” says Brooke Roberts, who is based in Brunswick, Georgia, and has shot several weddings at the site. “It encapsulates the feeling of Jekyll and the Golden Isles, the way the outdoors is incorporated into the home.”

While the interior is not part of regular tours, you can walk the grounds, including the signature cypress-lined alley. 381 Riverview Drive, 912-635-4036

Live Oak

If these boughs could talk, they’d tell centuries of stories

BY BILL WARHOP

The languid coastal plain of Jekyll Island teems with Southern live oaks, Quercus virginiana, dripping with fuzzy tendrils of Spanish moss. Georgia’s state tree is a symbol of strength and a bulwark against time itself.

Most of the tree’s mass is in its long, drooping limbs. The longest, heaviest branches swoop low to rest on the forest floor before soaring upward again, stabilizing the tree against hurricanes and other storms.

One of the oldest and largest live oaks on Jekyll is the majestic Plantation Oak in the National Historic Landmark District. It dates to the mid-seventeenth century and at seven feet eight inches in diameter is a foot wider than LeBron James is tall.

It’s one of the few “evergreen” oaks; leaves cling through the winter and are replaced over several weeks each spring.

The keel of the USS Constitution, launched in 1797, was built with live oak “ribs” sourced from coastal Georgia. The ship resisted British cannon fire so spectacularly in the War of 1812 it earned the nickname “Old Ironsides.”

WIDE OPEN BEACHES — ANY SEASON

Whether your visit to Jekyll Island is for leisure, a meeting, or to attend a wedding, the hotel’s modern, spacious 138 guestrooms feature generous services and amenities. Guests will enjoy On the House ® breakfast, swimming pool, hot tub, and full service lobby bar with tappas menu.