Cumberland Island visit will cost more

CUMBERLAND ISLAND — Visitors will have to pay a few dollars more next year to visit one of the most pristine and undisturbed barrier islands on the Georgia coast.

The National Park Service says it will raise entrance fees to Cumberland Island beginning Jan. 1. Adults will have to pay $7 to visit the island and its federally protected wilderness — a $3 increase from the current fee. Children 15 and younger will still be admitted for free.

The Park Service says it’s the first fee increase since 2006 for the island, located offshore from the city of St. Marys near the Georgia-Florida line.

The agency says the money will be used to repair and maintain roads and trails on the island, and to improve other facilities.

The island is accessible only by ferry or private boat, and no more than 300 visitors are permitted on the island at any one time.

It is the largest and southernmost of Georgia’s barrier islands. It became a protected National Seashore in 1972 and features a 9,800acre wilderness area.

Wildlife that can be found on the island include great blue herons, wild turkeys, peregrine falcons, armadillos, feral hogs and about 175 feral horses that are descendants of domesticated horses that were abandoned in 1949.

In the 1730s, James Oglethorpe laid out two forts, one on each end of the 18-mile-long island.

Aspiring planters then came to the island in the 1750s, once slavery was allowed there. In the early 1880s, Thomas Morrison Carnegie, a brother of industrialist Andrew Carnegie, came to the island with his wife, Lucy Coleman Carnegie. At one time, the Carnegies owned about 90 percent of the island.