Becoming a National Seashore

Cumberland Island’s Transformation to a Public Entity

We now have access to the amazing world of Cumberland Island because a diverse group of people had the foresight to initiate a dramatic solution to the threat of overdevelopment. By allowing a huge tract of a very demanding landscape to be turned into a National Seashore, these stewards laid the groundwork for preservation and protection of a unique and stunning ecosystem. In the 1960s and 1970s commercial and residential development exploded along the coastline of the Southeast and on its barrier islands. The effort to save Cumberland was launched and supported by many people, on and off the island, who did not want to see this unique environment turned into another suburbanized tourist site.

Family landowners, a few lawyers, a handful of legislators, a U.S. President and numerous individuals who had respect for the island even though they never actually lived there managed to come up with an enduring plan in the late 1960s and 1970s. The road was arduous and fraught with differing opinions, even among family members, but the story has a happy ending—or beginning.

Protecting Cumberland’s natural resources while honoring and acknowledging the contributions the island’s families made to its preservation has brought several entities and individuals together over the past thirty years. The story is not over, but Cumberland Island’s future is in good hands.

Who were some of the key players in this historical transformation, and how did the island become designated a National Seashore?

As mentioned elsewhere on this website, the Carnegie family has been an integral part of Cumberland Island’s modern history. Members of the family had used the island as a retreat in the late 19th century. In the 20th century, they also had an income producing farm operation, raising cows and pigs and growing corn. But in 1916, when Lucy Carnegie died, her will provided that the family-owned portion of Cumberland would be held in trust for her heirs.

The Carnegie family owned most of the island but not all of it. In the early 20th century, Charles Howard Candler of Atlanta bought a large tract of the northern part of the island from the High Point Hunting and Fishing Club when interest waned among its other members. Candler bought the property we know today as High Point from his fellow club members, and his descendents enjoy its use to this day.

Additionally, there were several smaller tracts owned by the Miller, Olsen, and Bunkley families; and there were homes owned by Robert Richarde, Beulah Alberty and others in the Half Moon Bluff settlement on the north end of the island.

Exclusive of this Candler tract and the smaller land holdings, however, Cumberland was primarily a Carnegie family estate until the death in 1959 of Florence Nightingale Carnegie Perkins, Lucy Carnegie’s last living child. From 1916 until Florence’s death, the island was held in trust among the heirs of Lucy and Thomas Carnegie.

In 1959 this trust ended, and for the next six years, from 1959 until 1965, the five branches of the Carnegie family maintained the island in a group effort. The family created a corporation called the Cumberland Island Company, Inc., which was managed by Putnam B. McDowell, Joseph C. Graves and Coleman C. Perkins, who were all members of the extended family. This corporation managed the “Carnegie” portion of the island, paying its taxes and maintaining the roads, while individual families took care of their own estates.

Keeping the island families’ interests protected under threat of development proved to be a tremendous task. Shortly after the end of the trust that had, in effect, protected the island from extensive commercial development by protecting the families’ interests, outside developers started making plans that would alter the face of the land forever.

Charles Fraser, a developer from South Carolina, purchased two tracts at each end of the island from a branch of the family that had no strong emotional ties to the Island. Fraser’s plans to develop high-end housing necessitated widening the Main Road that runs the length of the island, initially opening a ferry service, but later having a causeway and jetport built. This high-end housing development was modeled after a similar project he had done on Hilton Head Island, S.C., and would have completely transformed Cumberland into a suburban landscape.

But landowners on the island, with names such as Candler, Johnston, Ricketson, Ferguson, Bullard, Sprague, Rockefeller, Rice, Perkins, McDowell, Graves, Laughlin, Warren, Olsen, Wright, and Foster, among others, were not happy with these proposed changes. In fact, Fraser’s plans went completely counter to the landowners’ historic relationship with the land. Traditionally, these families had felt a moral and ethical commitment to protect what they realized was both a natural and a national treasure. Over the years several family members had farmed the land and harbored many animals, both domesticated and wild, but always with a deep regard for the uniqueness of the habitat. (For the sake of historical accuracy, it should be noted that Lucy R. Ferguson, a Carnegie heir and prominent island resident who died in 1989, was initially opposed to the idea of a National Seashore. She abhorred the idea of the Federal government being able to tell her what to do with her land. By the end of the debate, however, and before Congress, she agreed to the transformation, realizing that it was the best way to protect the island’s natural resources.)

Developments like the ones Fraser was proposing would have lasting, damaging effects on the Island. Meanwhile, some legislators for the state of Georgia expressed interest in buying portions of Cumberland for commercial and residential development as the state had on Jekyll Island. The resident landowner families, who had by now at least one hundred years of involvement on the island, were averse to this kind of development, also. A fairly radical way to save the island in as large a parcel as possible had to be devised.

The decision to pursue the effort of protecting the Island by way of having it declared a National Seashore was not an easy one, but it was the most efficacious and beneficial to the largest number of people. (This method of preservation and controlled access had a precedent in New England, where the Rockefeller family sold/donated the land now known as Acadia National Park on the coast of Maine in the 1920s.)

Retta Johnston Wright, one of the heirs inheriting the Plum Orchard estate and a granddaughter of Lucy and Thomas Carnegie, was one of the first family members to advocate protecting the island by transferring some of it to the National Park Service. Other family members joined her, some more willingly than others. In the face of possible complete transformation of the island, their cause became more united in time.

The families hired Thornton W. Morris, a young attorney from Atlanta, to represent them in developing a plan for long-term ownership and preservation of the island. Morris would draft most of the bill that turned Cumberland Island into a National Seashore. But over a two-year period, from 1968 to 1970, controversy raged between developer and residents.

In 1969, Stuart Udall, former Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, was representing the Johnston family in Washington, D.C. Aiding in the Cumberland Island Conservation Association, which the resident owners formed in 1968 to combat the development threat, Morris and Udall joined forces and worked closely with Georgia Congressman William S. Stuckey. Stuckey would sponsor the bill to have Cumberland Island designated a National Seashore. (We call Cumberland a National Park when, in fact, it is a National Seashore whose staff is funded by the National Park Service.)

None of this would have happened if the landowners on the island had not agreed that this was the best route to take. They felt this was the best way to preserve the natural world of the island. It was also a constructive way for the family to continue to have access to their homes and for some family members, specifically the family of Lucy and Robert Ferguson, to have a livelihood based on the island. (This branch of the Carnegie family owns the Greyfield Inn, which is still in operation.) The agreements to sell or give the family holdings to the Park Service provided the descendents with rights to continue to use their homes and the island.

The bill to turn Cumberland Island into a National Seashore, with all its accompanying protective regulations, was shepherded through the congressional process by a coalition of landowners and conservation groups. In 1972, President Nixon signed the legislation into law. At that point, the National Park Service had control of 3/5 of the land on Cumberland. Since that time, more and more parcels have been transferred to the Park’s holdings.

In 1982, Congress further protected Cumberland’s natural assets by approving the Cumberland Island Wilderness Act. Many conservationists felt that the National Park was over-promoting tourism by proposing increased tourist access to the Island. More and more support facilities would be needed, and bigger and bigger budgets would be required to maintain what was essentially a “natural” site. As a National Park, however, it was a destination for thousands of visitors.

By declaring portions of the island a Wilderness Area, those involved at the time felt the natural beauty would be honored in a more lasting way because public access would be limited. The Wilderness designation was intended to be a self-regulatory device for the Park Service to curtail its own expansive plans. But the fact that human beings have made a lasting mark on the Island’s cultural and historical landscape cannot be ignored, and without conservation-oriented families like the Carnegies, the Candlers and their descendents, the Island would not be in the healthy condition it is today.

Debate and controversy continue to this day over the Wilderness Area distinction. It is the hope of the Cumberland Island Conservancy that through education and support of research and conservation efforts, this debate will continue in a healthy and constructive way, a way that is best for the protection of the island as a natural habitat deeply affected, and much revered, by the people who have cared for it through many generations.

Approximately 45,000 visitors came to the island this year. This includes day hikers, campers, school groups and youth and elder hostelers, as well as researchers and conservationists.

For camping reservations and other information about coming to the island, please call the National Park Service at 912-882-4336.

To join the Cumberland Island Conservancy, contact the Conservancy by writing to: The Cumberland Island Conservancy • 1950 N. Park Place, Suite 475, Atlanta, Ga. 30339 or email us at info@cumberlandisland.org.