The first Steps Back

The island opened to the public as a state park in 1948. The Jekyll Island Authority, established in 1950, focused its first efforts on getting the ocean side of the island ready for regular use, even as the Historic District sat in disrepair.

The causeway opened in 1954, making the island more accessible to curious vacationers. But Jekyll was far from an overnight tourist success.

Mason Stewart was 16 in '57 when he took a job as a lifeguard on Jekyll. In the summers, a truck would pick him up in Brunswick, along with other lifeguards, for their shifts monitoring a growing number of visitors staying at the Sam Snead Buccaneer Hotel (where the Hampton Inn & Suites currently stands), the Wanderer Motel (now the Holiday Inn Resort) or another of the new hotels up and down the coast. "All of the activity was on the beach," says Stewart. "It was a very interesting time. There was no liquor on the island in those days and not a lot of nightlife other than the miniature golf course."

In those days, the island belonged to the young, who came across the new causeway from the mainland. Stewart says there wasn't a lot of drinking and partying going on, though he does happen to know that you can fit a surprising amount of vodka inside a plastic hula hoop. But if you had a car, you could drive right up to the beach.

"On summer evenings, if you were a teenager, it was the beginning of the rock 'n' roll era," he says. "You could lay out your beach blanket, turn your transistor radio to WAPE out of Jacksonville, and watch the sunset. Driftwood Beach was a secret that only us lovers knew about. We kept that to ourselves."

The beauty of Jekyll would not remain a secret much longer. Under the guidance of the JIA, careful development along the ocean coast continued, while the island's natural splendor was preserved. In the 1970s, the Authority turned its attention to the Historic District, renovating and rehabilitating the cottages and the Jekyll Island Club, which reopened as a luxury resort in 1985. In recent years, the JIA has worked to connect Jekyll's present to its past, setting up markers that detail island history all the way back to the Native Americans' time. The history of the island is now delineated; the Colonial Era, Plantation Era, Club Era, State Era and today.

Some of the history lost during the Club and State periods is gradually returning to Jekyll. Furniture and other items from cottages are being replaced. And in 2019, Dykes donated the two flags he had found in the Jekyll Island Club turret to Mosaic, Jekyll Island Museum. He had held on to them for 65 years.

"We visited the Club and walked around," he says. "Everything has changed for the better. The credit goes to the people that were taking care of it and the people who promoted it. They're doing what they can, and I'm proud of that."

Bridging Club and State

Before the state of Georgia could pull Jekyll Island out of its “Forgotten Era” and open the isle to the masses, it first had to create a way for people to get there. Previously, the island was only accessible via boat—usually a yacht owned by one of the wealthy Club Era patrons. It wasn’t until 1954, seven years after the state acquired Jekyll, that the original drawbridge was completed, officially opening the Jekyll Island Causeway. That drawbridge was replaced in 1996 by the taller concrete bridge that stands today.

—Tony Rehagen