Whether you’re a history buff, a foodie, or just looking to enjoy some scenic views, River Street has something for everyone.
Savannah’s River Street is a vibrant and historic area that offers a plethora of activities and sights for visitors. Whether you’re a history buff, a foodie, or just looking to enjoy some scenic views, River Street has something for everyone. Here’s a detailed guide to some of the best things to see and do on Savannah’s River Street:
Savannah’s River Street is a destination that truly has it all. Whether you’re exploring its rich history, indulging in delicious food, or simply taking in the scenic views, you’re sure to have an unforgettable experience.
Christmas on the Millionaires Row of Georgia’s Gold Coast!
Jekyll Island just before Christmas Day 2020
After spending the late fall in Atlanta, GA during 2020, when the cold wet winter arrived I escaped further South to Jekyll Island just before Christmas. The weather was in the low 60s and the island had decked itself out with its annual Christmas light show. The light show is a self-guided driving tour that takes you through several parts of the island and ends at the historical district with amazing lighting displays in front of the houses and through the 100-year-old Oak trees that are spread throughout the historical district. Then after the tour, I went inside the Jekyll Island Club Hotel, and had an expertly made Old Fashion at the bar while maintaining social distance. It was a warm and lovely way to kick off the Christmas season even during such a horrible year as 2020!
Christmas Light display in the Historical District.
Jekyll Island which is part of the Gold Coast of Georgia has a rich history that stretches back to at least the 1400s where it was first a Native American settlement as part of the Creek Nation. Starting around 1510, white man arrived and over the next couple of centuries it was colonized first by the French, then the Spanish and finally the English until it became part of the United States. But in the late 1800s, Jekyll island was taken over by an entirely new type of invader, the American Captains of Industry!
Road through the Historical District.
After the American Civil War, the original owners of the island returned and set up shop once again. Previous to the war Jekyll island had been a plantation whose work force was based on African American slaves. The island was owned by the Du Bignon family, who were refugees from France that had escaped the French Revolution. Upon their return to the island, the father, Henri Charles Du Bignon divided the island among his four children.
The 100 year old Oak trees between houses in the Historical District.
JEKYLL ISLAND CLUB
In 1875 John Du Bignon started to buy out the rest of his family and set about trying to market the island as a winter retreat for the super wealthy of the Northeast on par with summer retreats such as Bar Harbor, Maine and Newport, Rhode Island. The plan came to fruition on February 17, 1886. He and 53 wealthy investors formed a private club called the Jekyll Island Club, and a limit of 100 members was imposed to preserve the club’s exclusivity.
Side view of the Jekyll Island Club Hotel
The first building of the new club to be built was the large Jekyll Island Club Hotel, a two-winged structure that served as the centerpiece of the club. The “club” began to sell off plots in the area surrounding the Hotel and soon some of the wealthiest families in America had built large mansions called “cottages” which became known locally as “Millionaires Row”.
Moss Cottage, Home of the Macy Family. The shingles are made from local Cypress trees on the island.
Some of the millionaire owners were the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Goodyear family, the Macy (the department store) family, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and Joseph Pulitzer. They would arrive by private railroad car or private yacht bringing with them servants, horses, buggies, and other toys to amuse themselves during the winter months. It is rumored that every time Carnegie’s yacht arrived that he demanded that a cannon be fired off in salute to him.
The back of Indian Mound Cottage, home of the Rockefellers. Named for a mound in front of the house thought to be an Native American burial site. It was really a large mound of oyster shells buried.
The largest and most expensive winter home built on Jekyll was Crane Cottage. Richard Teller Crane, Jr – think Crane plumbing fixtures. 20 Bedrooms and 17 Bathrooms! It caused quite an uproar, as Club members valued the “simplicity” of their cottages. To try and be good neighbors, it’s said the Cranes had marble flooring removed and replaced with wood.
View of the Crane Cottage from the gardens.
The “club” also played a role in the formation of the Federal Reserve system of banks that we have today. According to history, a duck hunt on the island lead to the creation of our national banking system. In November 1910, Senator Nelson Aldrich and Asst. Secretary of the Treasury met with five of the country’s leading financiers in the Club Room of the Hotel and devised a plan to create a national banking system that became the Federal Reserve which is the agency that sets national banking and monetary policy for the US.
Jekyll Island Club Hotel, centerpiece of the Historical District. Hotel is still operational 12 months a year.
Jekyll Island was also part of the first transcontinental phone call which took place in 1915. The call took place between President Woodrow Wilson in Washington, D.C., Alexander Graham Bell in NY, Thomas Watson in San Francisco and Theodore Vail, president of AT&T who was on Jekyll Island. Remember when long distance was expensive? It was REAL expensive when it first became available – a call between New York and San Francisco? $20.70 for the first 3 minutes.
The Sans Souci, the first “condo” building on the island. Six luxury apartments for single Millionaires right next to the Hotel. No children or mistresses allowed. There large balconies on both front and back of the apartments.
From 1888 to 1942 the club opened every January for the winter season, yet even the wealthy suffered during the Great Depression, and the club had financial difficulties. When the United States entered World War II, it ordered the island evacuated for security purposes, ending the era of the Jekyll Island Club. After the war in 1947, the State of Georgia bought the island.
Map of the Historical District including the businesses that serve the tourists.
In the midsection of the intercoastal side of the island is a designated 240-acre (0.97 km2) Historic District. This includes most of the buildings erected during the Jekyll Island Club period, which have been carefully preserved. The district revolves around the Jekyll Island Club Hotel. Thirty-three buildings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries surround the hotel and many of them are the elaborate mansion-sized “cottages” built by the rich. Some cottages offer rooms for rent for temporary stays. Others have been adapted for use as museums, art galleries, or bookstores. The hotel is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The historic district itself has been listed as a National Historic Landmark District since 1978.
Tram tours originate from the Jekyll Island Museum located on Stable Road directly across from the historic district. They run several times daily and guides describe much of the history of this area.
The view of the shoreline from the Jekyll Island Wharf.
THE NEXT TO LAST SLAVE SHIP
Sadly, Jekyll Island also played a part in the end of Slavery in the United States. America ended legal slave trade in 1808, but the practice was continued illegally until the beginning of the Civil War. The last ship to bring slaves from Africa to the US was the Clotilda out of Mobile, Alabama in July 1860. Yet, the next to last ship was the Wanderer, a pleasure boat that was converted by Southern slave traders in Africa and brought the last large load of slaves from Congo to Georgia in 1858. Of the 500 Africans bought for the voyage, 409 survived and arrived off the southern tip of Jekyll. The crew smuggled the captured Africans ashore and then on to the mainland. News of the slave ship set off a wave of outrage. The federal government’s effort to prosecute the conspirators was unsuccessful. For several years, it was thought that the Wanderer was the last documented slave ship to arrive in the USA before proof of the Clotilda was found.
View from the front of the Crane Cottage (Mansion). The waterway in front is part of the Inter-Coastal Waterway.
Jekyll Island Tourist Information
The island also serves as host to Georgia Sea Turtle Center which is a functioning hospital and rehabitation center for sick and injured Sea Turtles and is the only center of its kind in Georgia. It is open to the public. For more information about times and events, call 912-635-4444, or go to https://www.explorejekyllisland.com/Sea_Turtle_Center.shtml .
Jekyll Island Historic Tours & Gift Shop offers a variety of tours for the whole family. Take a guided tour and step back in time as each historic building’s story unfolds, and the Jekyll Island Club and the National Landmark Historic District come alive. For more information, please call 912.635.4036. Or visit https://www.jekyllisland.com/history-category/tours/.
Sailboat on the Inter-Coastal Waterway which runs by Jekyll Island.
Photos by James Carey
Information provided by Wikipedia and Jekyll Island Historical District and www.explorejekyllisland.com.
One of my grand plans before I left to drive across the country was to stop everyday to see something interesting, take a hike, or visit some place I haven’t been before – but after driving four days non-stop across the United States (of course only 300 miles a day) I was anxious to get to my final destination, Atlanta. So Days 5 and 6, I really didn’t stop, I just drove.
Abilene, Texas was a nice town. The night I arrived I wanted to get some something to eat in a nice restaurant and I found a nice place using Yelp. The bartender recommended a pub near the local college to check out, and I ended up in a few games of friendly pool with some locals who were very nice. Abilene is actually considered a very good place to visit and live – this link will tell you a lot about Abilene history and livability – https://livability.com/tx/abilene . But overall Abilene did not leave much of an impression on me. I was only there for a night and my apologies to anyone who reads this who is from Abilene but I just decided to move on down the road.
Cisco, TX Photo J.Carey
But as I was headed east on Interstate 20 I did come to an interesting little town called Cisco, TX. Cisco seems to be surrounded by a lot of trees which was different after 4 days of driving across desert and flatland. That was because of Lake Cisco, a man-made lake created in the 1920’s.
Conrad,Hilton Photo J.Carey
One of Cisco’s claims to fame is that Conrad Hilton, the founder of the Hilton Hotel chain bought and operated his first hotel in Cisco. The story goes that Hilton came to Cisco to buy a bank, but the bank cost too much, so he purchased the Mobley Hotel in 1919. The hotel is now a local museum and community center. The hotel had about 40 rooms and did a very brisk business right from the start as this occurred during the beginning of the Texas oil boom. It’s now on the National Historic Register, and right next to the community center is a little park called the Conrad Hilton Park with a small statue of him there.
Photo J.Carey
The rest of the drive that day is kind of a blur as to what happened because the entire focus of the trip was now just trying to get out of Texas and across as much of Louisiana as I could make in my 300 mile radius. I spent the night in Greenwood, Louisiana.
One last comment about Texas before I move on. What is it in Texas with the super high transition ramps to other freeways? They’re in every city no matter how small or how large, and they just keep going higher and higher and higher. Other states have them as well but Texas seems to have a real proclivity for building these structures. As I drove across the country along the southern route, Texas by far had more of them than any other place I’ve ever seen. Fort Worth has so many freeways crossing and re-crossing each other that the confusion of roads and bridges and transition roads is called the “Mixmaster.”
The Mixmaster, Fort Worth
Day 6 was just spent driving I-20 through Shreveport, Louisiana on to the Mississippi River. I crossed the river at Vicksburg, MS. This is the site of a huge battle during the Civil War between the North and the South. The North had been trying to take Vicksburg, a major port city for the Confederates on the Mississippi for months. Every time they were rebuffed by the Southern soldiers. Finally Lincoln placed a relatively unknown general in charge of the effort, U.S. Grant. Grant laid siege to the city for 45 days cutting off all food and water. The Southern command finally surrendered, and the victory turned Grant into a Northern national hero.
Entrance to Vicksburg Military Park Photo J.Carey
The Vicksburg National Military Park is here that you can drive through and see almost the entire battlefield. Even places where people currently live and own homes are included in the National Monument. It is really quite moving when you consider the sheer amount of death and destruction because the weapons of war had far outstripped the stratagems that were used to guide men into battle. Although the sheer amount of information about who was fighting at what position on the battlefield, and who did what, and who died here after a while becomes overwhelming.
Real cannon used in the war, and actively shot each day in a mock battle. Photo J.Carey
Here I have a a comment about growing up in the South. I’m of a certain age when the people of the South still talked about the War of Northern Aggression. Every little boy that I know including myself grew up pretending to be a Confederate soldier fighting against the Yankee intruders. Thank God that is all changed to a large degree. I don’t think many little boys grow up anymore wanting to pretend fight the most deadly war that the United States has ever fought which was based on slavery, and that we fought against each other. What the southern states in the late 1800’s did to hang on to some integrity after losing the Civil War was to put memorial plaques up everywhere that something happened during the Civil War. And they’re literally thousands of them in every state. Starting at Louisiana and continuing on into Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia, thousands of Civil War historical markers everywhere covering everything from houses to where people slept, to where battles were fought, to where it seems like famous people took a crap. They are everywhere.
True family story – My mother used to like to read the markers and often complained to my father when he was driving that he would not stop and let her read them. So once on a trip to Mississippi after her constant complaining, my father began to stop at every maker and read them out loud in their entirety. After 10 miles of this history lesson, my mother gave in and never complained about reading the historical makers again.
Waking up the next day, I headed straight toward Atlanta through Birmingham on Interstate 20. As I drove further and further east that day my anxiety over why I was taking this trip and what I hoped to accomplish in Atlanta grew. Why had I driven 2400 miles to another city to prove what? To whom and why? Plus driving for 7 straight days with huge bridges, big trucks, crazy drivers, and the endless boredom of just looking at scenery pass by made me a nervous wreck the further I drove.
Yet I could also reflect on the amazing size of our country and the constant changes in scenery and climate. I started on the Pacific Ocean through the changing scenery of California, Arizona, New Mexico to the Flat Lands of Texas. Than in East Texas things start to change with trees, and the drive just gets Greener and Greener and Greener as the humidity soars, and plants and trees start to take over everywhere. I travel back to the South often but I am always amazed at how green it is and how many trees there are.
The maze of roads around Atlanta! Map by TRIPinfo.com
I finally got to Atlanta about three in the afternoon. I had chosen to stay for the first few days near my nephew Justin and his family who live in Woodstock , GA about 27 miles outside of downtown Atlanta. I had rented an Airbnb just a couple of miles from his home. Yet, in my exhausted and anxiety ridden state, I just could not handle driving on Atlanta’s infamous I- 285 Perimeter which is like a racecourse with too much traffic and huge trucks and Atlanta’s very aggressive drivers all doing 10 miles per hours over the speed limit. So I choose to take smaller state highways around to Woodstock, but that gave me the opportunity to understand how much Atlanta and the surrounding area had grown through the years. What had been open country and small towns was now malls, housing developments and apartment/condo complexes. Rows of them in all directions.
Downtown Woodstock, GA Photo – visitingwoodstockga.com
Arriving at my AirBnb, I unpacked my car and set up my temporary quarters. While worried, I was also very excited to see what the next two months would hold for me as I began my adventure in Atlanta. Performing and seeing what opportunities either in show business or real estate existed here, and the chance to really start to understand the city that I’ve passed through so many times during my life but have never stayed for more than a week at a time. After 7 long tiring days, The Grand Adventure was about to begin.
unique car decorations, Woodstock, GA photo – J. Carey
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