Page 41 - Travel Leisure - USA (February 2020)

Biking on one of E X P E R I E N C E S
GOLD STANDARD
Georgia’s Jekyll Island may revel in its Gilded Age glory, but don’t
be fooled. On a weekend jaunt to an impeccably revamped resort,
LILA HARRON BATTIS finds simplicity behind the splendor.
S I DROVE ACROSS the causeway and
A between the imposing pillars that mark
the entrance to Jekyll Island, the air
became dense and quiet. The roads emptied out,
the wide skies of the marshland gave way to
gnarled red cedars and live oaks dripping with
PHOTOGRAPHS BY PETER FRANK EDWARDS
Jekyll Island’s
coastal trails.
Spanish moss, and the world seemed to hold its
breath. I hung a left and eventually came to the
end of the road, to a grand, pale yellow building
with a gingerbread-house portico and a flagpole-
topped turret rising like a beacon: the Jekyll Island
Club Resort (jekyll club.com; doubles from $159).
In the good old days of Jekyll Island, from the
club’s founding in 1888 to its final season in 1942,
men who gave their names to colleges and banks
and cultural institutions would pack up their
families each winter and head south, to a speck
of land midway between Jacksonville and
Savannah. Carnegies, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts,
T R AV E L A N D L E I S U R E . C O M 37