Shell Rings to Submarines: A St. Simons Island Driving Tour

St. Simons Island is almost exactly the same size as Manhattan – but instead of skyscrapers, it has live oaks, and instead of eight million people, it has 6,000 years of layered history. On this driving tour, you'll trace the island's story from Indigenous shell rings to World War II submarine attacks, discovering how soldiers, enslaved communities, and seafood entrepreneurs shaped this Georgia barrier island.

The tour starts at the Pier Village parking lot at the end of Mallory Street, beside the old fishing docks where steam ferries once unloaded tourists in straw hats. From here, you'll drive past the St. Simons Lighthouse, built in 1872 on the footprint of an earlier light whose Confederate-hidden Fresnel lens has never been found, and along the coast where German U-boats torpedoed American oil tankers just offshore in 1942.

You'll continue north along Frederica Road, passing subdivisions that were once cotton plantations and a stretch of marsh that forms part of the largest continuous salt marsh system on the Atlantic coast. Along the way, you'll hear the story of Igbo Landing on Dunbar Creek, where a group of West Africans chose defiance over enslavement in 1803, and visit Fort Frederica National Monument, where General James Oglethorpe's outnumbered forces turned back a Spanish invasion fleet in 1742. The tour ends back at Neptune Park by the pier, named for Neptune Small, a man born into slavery on Retreat Plantation whose name now marks the land he eventually owned.

On this 90-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Climb 129 steps to the top of the St. Simons Lighthouse for views stretching 22 miles out to sea
• Visit the WWII Home Front Museum in the former Coast Guard Station, built by the WPA in 1936
• Walk the marsh at Bloody Marsh, site of the 1742 ambush that kept Georgia under British control
• Explore First African Baptist Church, built in 1869 by formerly enslaved island residents
• Drive the oak-canopied avenue Anna Page King planted at Retreat Plantation
• Stop at the Historic Harrington School, the last one-room schoolhouse on the Georgia coast

Small in size but not in story, St. Simons rewards curious visitors. Paula's warm, personal narration makes 6,000 years of history feel like a conversation with a neighbor who has lived here for fifty of them.