Brunswick: Georgia’s Port to the Past

Brunswick has been an important port city on the Georgia coast since it was founded by the British in 1738 as protection against Spanish incursions from Florida. Today, the docks are busiest unloading shrimp and vehicles. Only two ports in America handle more cars and trucks each year than Brunswick. The Old Town National Historic District is studded with notable architecture (Victorian treasures like Old City Hall and the Mahoney-McGarvey House among them) and majestic live oaks. Lover’s Oak at Prince and Albany streets is considered to be 900 years old.

Planning a visit? Stay at Golden Isles RV Park.

Brunswick first attracted national notice in the 1870s when Sydney Lanier, the unofficial poet laureate of Georgia, came to the seaside to ease his tuberculosis and penned the beloved poem The Marshes of Glynn. Today a gorgeous cable-stayed bridge crosses those marshes that is the longest span in the Peach State.

The Sydney Lanier Bridge leads to Jekyll Island, once the winter home of Vanderbilts and Goodyears and Pulitzers when it was a 19th century private hunting reserve. Now a Georgia state park, the Jekyll Island Club Hotel and the millionaire cottages have been preserved in a historic district along with ten miles of undeveloped ocean beaches, paved bike paths and 63 holes of golf. Jekyll Island is part of Georgia’s Golden Isles that features St. Simons Island with its boutique shops and beach-casual eateries. Fort Frederica, which General James Oglethorpe built three years after founding Georgia in 1733 to challenge Spanish control of the coast, is preserved as a national monument here as well.

The oft-renovated Ritz Theatre that began life in 1899 as the Grand Opera House on Newcastle Street is a year-round arts center presenting live performances, films and exhibits. It is always appropriate to cap off a show in Brunswick with a steaming bowl of thick Brunswick stew. The traditional Southern stalwart was invented on July 2, 1898 on St. Simons Island when some squirrel meat was tossed into an iron pot bubbling with a tomato-based stew stuffed with lima beans, corn, okra and other vegetables. At least, that is what an iron pot memorial at the Visitor Center claims. Make your own judgements at the Brunswick Rockin’ Stewbilee in October when 50 teams get cooking in a stew-off.