Page 42 - Travel Leisure - USA (February 2020)

Atlanta
eor ia
E X P E R I E N C E S Savannah ATLANTIC OCEAN
Jekyll Island
and Pulitzers would arrive in the Golden Isles,
just off the Georgia coast, come January and
spend the next three months living the simple
life, far from the flash of Newport or New York.
The simple life, when you were a Gilded Age
gazillionaire, looked like this: A private club whose
members collectively held one-sixth of the world’s
wealth. William Morris wallpaper in your dining
room and Tiffany stained glass in the church.
Italian Renaissance and Shingle Style mansions
that you called “cottages” without a trace of irony.
Driftwood Beach,
on Jekyll Island’s Black-tie attire every night at the Jekyll Island Club,
eastern coast. with not a single reworn ball gown all winter long.
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The island fell out of fashion in the 1940s—
U-boats loitering off the coast put a damper
on the festivities—and the club and assorted
mansion-cottages sank into disrepair. Five of the
16 cottages are gone—all that remains of one are
a pair of marble lions guarding the entry, nearly
swallowed by greenery. Resort concierge Sherri
Zacher, who fell in love with the island during
visits as a kid in the 1970s, recalls sneaking into
the dilapidated dining room and finding the club
ledger still in place, covered in dust and mold.
“The clubhouse was a thing of beauty, but she was
going to be high-maintenance,” Zacher said. “She
needed someone to come and love up on her.”
The historic buildings held on long enough
to be bought up and restored, and in 1985, the
Jekyll Island Club Resort opened its doors. In 2017,
new management added a beachfront sister
property, the 40-suite Jekyll Ocean Club (doubles
from $199), and began a revamp of the main
building. This year, the resort will unveil updates
to the cottage suites and marquee spaces in the
clubhouse, including the dining room.
Jekyll has a handful of well-loved attractions.
The freshly overhauled Mosaic Museum (jekyll
island.com), a small but thoughtful collection that
explores the island’s history, runs tours through
the historic district surrounding the resort. A rogue
guide let my friend Eléonore and me peek at the
off-limits upstairs of one cottage, cluttered with
turn-of-the-century relics—a spinning wheel here,
a cane wheelchair there. We visited the Georgia
Sea Turtle Center (gstc.jekyllisland.com), a
rehabilitation clinic and museum, and wandered
through the old servants’ quarters, now home to
tiny shops selling fudge and wind chimes. But my
favorite part of the whole weekend was the
moment I ran out of things to do.
I could have gone golfing or played tennis, if I
knew how to golf or play tennis. There’s a water
park, and kayak tours of the marsh. But after years
of turning my travels into a to-do list, it was
disarming to be in a place whose charms are rooted
in just being there, waking up to what surrounds
you. The island is only about nine square miles, all
of which is state parkland, and strict regulations
save it from overdevelopment. Beyond the resort,
cell service ranges from spotty to nonexistent.
There are few organized activities. The calm
sharpened my attention ever so slightly, and the ILLUSTRATION BY MAY PARSEY
world came alive.
On a nature walk with park ranger Ray
Emerson, I learned to distinguish cabbage