St. Catherines Island

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

St. Catherines Island is one of the Sea Islands on the coast of the U.S. state of Georgia, 50 miles (80 km) south of Savannah in Liberty County. The privately held island is ten miles long and from one to three miles wide; more than half of its 14,640 acres (59 km²) are tidal marsh and wetlands.

The island has been inhabited for at least 4000 years, and was a Guale settlement by 1576. By 1587 it was the northernmost permanent Spanish outpost on the Atlantic Coast's. Spanish colonies were planted as far north as Chesapeake Bay, but none lasted more than a year or two. During the 17th century, St. Catherines Island was the center of the Guale missionary province of Spanish Florida.

In 1766 the island was leased by Button Gwinnett. It was run as a plantation for nearly a century, until the Civil War ended, and for some time afterwards, though in 1868 the newly freed slaves of the plantation were forced to relocate to White Bluff, Georgia.

In 1943 Edward John Noble bought the island; in 1968, ten years after his death, the island was transferred to the Edward J. Noble Foundation.