[Kelly Kazek] Driftwood Beach on Jekyll island, Ga., is often voted one of America’s most romantic beaches. It is a popular place to ride horses and its stark appearance makes it a favorite of photographers.
See some of my photos, and photos from Jekyll Island tourism sites below.
Beaches on the Georgia coast are different from those in Florida and Alabama – the sand is packed and the water is darker. And on Jekyll Island, which is preserved in its entirety as a state park, the beach is covered in driftwood. I took Baby Girl and a friend to the beach a few years ago and we went horseback-riding on the beach.
The beach was named in 1733, when General James Oglethorpe gave it the name of his friend, Sir Joseph Jekyll, a financier from England. In the late 1800s, the island was purchased by a group of the nation’s wealthiest men – named Rockefeller, Morgan, Vanderbilt and Pulitzer – who turned it into an exclusive hunting club.
Click here to read my post on the historic, and reportedly haunted, club.
JekyllIsland.com says a conservation program is tasked with preserving the natural beauty of the island, including Driftwood Beach. “The most accessible of Georgia’s protected barrier islands, the majority of Jekyll remains in a natural state and development is tightly limited to preserve the balance,” the website says. “The island is home to more than a thousand acres of mature maritime forest, an icon of the coastal South that has become threatened by over development throughout its range.” Members of the program also work to preserve nesting loggerhead turtles, dune systems and tidal marshes.
KellyKazek.com 