Smoky Scout's Hiking Adventures: Cumberland Island National Seashore: Dungeness

Sunday, November 18, 2018

Cumberland Island National Seashore: Dungeness

Cumberland Island National Seashore – 2/16/18 – 5 Miles

Georgia's largest and southernmost barrier island on its Atlantic coast has a fascinating recent human history that I’d been vaguely aware of for years and has been on my list of “somedays”. Then I lost a few nights’ sleep in the thralls of Untamed: The Wildest Woman In America and the Fight For Cumberland Island and this National Park Service treasure was bumped to the top of the “ASAP” list. What I got from my visit was not what I came for, but much more.

[I won’t recap the book here – you’ll have to read it! Hint: Carol Ruckdeschel v. the Carnegies, the National Park Service, and just about everybody else.]

Cumberland Island is accessible only by personal boat or by a ferry from the town of St. Mary’s, a stone’s throw from the Florida state line and a six-hour drive from our home in North Carolina. For this reason and the fact that the island has limited accommodations and is crazy popular, careful advance planning was necessary to make the most out of a long weekend visit. I sold the idea of maritime backpacking to Jim and our friends Cathy and Mike.

Wintertime is prime time on Cumberland Island – no heat, no ticks, no mosquitos, no no see ums – so I made a plan for President’s Day weekend. Even months in advance, campsites were booked up and I didn’t get exactly the itinerary I wanted for 3 nights at 3 separate sites. Here’s the plan:

Day 1: Set up at Sea Camp Beach Campground, hike around at the south end of the island, visit Dungeness ruins, walk on the beach back to camp

Day 2: Hike to Brickhill Bluff primitive campsite, visit Plum Orchard and Table Point en route

Day 3: Hike to north end of the island, visit First African Baptist Church, hike along the shore back down to camp at Stafford Beach Campground

Day 4: Hike back to Sea Camp Dock, afternoon ferry back to St. Mary’s

Foreshadowing: God laughs when humans make plans. Things worked out quite differently.

If you’re going, begin your thorough research with the National Park Service website. All the practicalities you need to know about visiting the island, for a day or an overnight stay, is on there. There are friendly folks on the phone if you have a question (ex: what does no water at a campsite really mean? Is there a place to store gear at Sea Camp?) There is no Plan B option for overnights – you can’t board the ferry with a bunch of camping equipment and no campsite reservation. Read blog posts about the island for different options of activities, guided jeep tours, how much can you see in a day as opposed to a weekend? Bikes are great on the island, but remember it’s all sand, sometimes deep sand.

The haul from Charlotte to St. Mary’s was l-o-n-g. We spent the night in a local hotel to catch the 9:00 a.m. ferry (supper at St. Mary’s Seafood & More)

On Friday morning we stopped at a convenience store for last-minute stuff. Jim noticed someone buying a big can of bug spray and the cashier commented on how warm it had been and that the bugs were out already. A smart guy, that Jim, he added bug spray to the tab – thank goodness!

The ferry was loaded with day travelers and excited campers pulling gear-loaded wagons. The 45-minute cruise took us out through the marshes, across Cumberland Sound and up Fancy Bluff Creek to the west of Cumberland Island. The gray skies lightened to a cheery blue.

Cathy and me on ferry

Shivers of anticipation (trepidation?) disembarking at Sea Camp Dock

First things first, we walked half a mile towards the ocean looking for our campsite. We saw immediately that we weren’t in Kansas anymore. The canopy of live oaks dripping with Spanish moss and the dense understory of palmettos were just breathtaking.

Giant sand dunes separate the campground from the beach and each site is tucked in among the foliage, very private screening. Every site is large enough for several tents and includes at least one picnic table and a cut little screened house atop a pole for food storage. There are flushing toilets and cold running water at this campground and at Stafford Beach.

Nature’s jungle gym near our campground

We walked back to the Sea Camp ranger station/visitor center to pick up the River Trail, following it along the sound side of the island southward to the Ice House Museum (the building served as ice storage for the Carnegie estate) with its compressed 5,000-year history from the original inhabitants, the Timucuan Indians, through the Carnegies, who owned most of the island from the late 1800s until selling to the National Park Service in the early 1970s.

Ice House c. 1900

Which Carnegies, you ask? Thomas Carnegie, the also-rich brother of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, and Thomas’s wife, Lucy, built their winter home, Dungeness, on the south end of the island. Thomas died before the home was completed, and Lucy and their nine children made the Scottish castle style estate their permanent residence. In all, Lucy owned more than 90% of the island and built homes for each of the nine kids. Dungeness was destroyed by fire in 1959.

The Carnegies’ presence on the island is interesting to us because of familiarity with the family name, but the drama of Cumberland Island’s ownership has many twists and turns prior to their arrival on the scene. Read more here or in Untamed, the book referenced above.

Next we walked to Dungeness. The ruins of the castle stand defiantly in an expanse of flat green lawn. Feral ponies graze (not wild – more on that tomorrow) and time seems to stand still. Visitors are not allowed inside the structure but have access to the grounds, arbors and outbuildings.

Continuing eastward on a path and then a boardwalk, we walked through the dunes and onto the beach, then turned north to head back to our campsite. The shells along the beach were more varied and abundant than anywhere else I’ve been.