Sea Island, GA
June 7, 2026
During the warming period of the Pleistocene, air conditioners, automobiles, and oil drilling were nonexistent. Yet sea levels were fifty feet above, and the shoreline eighty feet west of, the current Georgia coast.
Glaciers never covered this state. But their northerly retreat deposited offshore dunes along the south Atlantic coast.
Adjacent to St Simon’s, Sea Island is among the newer buffers shielding south Georgia. It’s a Holocene whippersnapper, rising above the waves only five millennia ago.
For the last century, hundreds of exquisite houses and a couple luxury hotels have done their best to push it back under. But this speck of land makes for a nice weekend while it’s here.
Old World Charm
In the early 1960s, Philip Anschutz bought his father’s oil drilling company. With the returns, he entered a slew of industries, including real estate, railroads, sports, and entertainment.
In 2016, he ventured into hospitality, buying the Sea Island Resort. Among its prizes was The Cloister, an elegant assemblage of old-world charm from which I’m writing today.
Condensation usually coats the panes of the sublime solarium, creating an impressionist palette of Spanish tiles, stately oaks, and regal palms, enlivened by fresh rays of a rising sun.
But not today. This morning no moisture mars the glass. Amid a soothing breeze, humidity is low, the air cool, and clouds nonexistent. Especially for South Georgia in June, this weather should be hung in the Louvre.
As a supplement to morning coffee, Mozart supplies a soundtrack, as a couple lovebird parrots chirp their off-key arias.
I’m up the hall from the centerpiece of the complex. The Colonial Lounge greets new guests, while welcoming stragglers from the Tavola Bar. This elegant marvel forms a captivating foyer. Arcaded tiers adorn white stucco walls, atop which an upper clerestory sheds natural light.
Between here and there sits the Spanish Lounge, retaining the original design of architect Addison Mizner. After an update a couple decades ago, the entire edifice voices an honorable echo of his initial intent.
But this particular parlor… with its stately fireplace, timber beams, and roof deckings… is an exact recording. Down to the materials, the room is a faithful replica of Mizner’s work.
Among the premier architects of the 1920s, Mizner lent novel panache to Palm Beach and an upscale brand to Boca Raton. Because of his success to the south, Mizner’s vision and talent were soon requested up the coast, to prove Gibraltar isn’t the only place the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean.
Influence also comes from the opposite end of the “Roman Lake.” Almost 700 area rugs cover the floors of this resort. Each of these pedestrian ornaments was designed and woven in Turkish villages. It’s as if Asia Minor awaited the Cloister… and it’s nice to know its patience paid off.
Change of Fortune
The first European came under arduous conditions three centuries ago, when James Mackay settled St Simons while serving under James Oglethorpe.
For two hundred years, the island was relatively isolated, reserved for grazing by smatterings of plantation owners fending off Indians from the interior, Yankees from the North, and malaria from the marsh.
Fortunes changed when a larger fortune arrived. In 1926, a beneficent Yankee was welcomed. That year, Hudson Motors tycoon Howard Coffin bought Sea Island.
He opened The Cloister a couple years later. When President Coolidge spent the following Christmas here, he put this place on the map.
Electricity, water, and phone service soon fed new “cottages” around the resort. A residential community arose, which today is as expensive as in any vacation destination in America.
Abundant Fruit
Not long after Sea Island found the map, it helped to shrink it.
Soon after the Cloister opened, Paul Redfern flew from Sea Island to Brazil. It would be the first non-stop flight from the U.S. to Brazil. His plane was sighted two hundred miles off South America. No one would ever see him again.
Yet the seeds he planted bore abundant fruit. Tho’ he’d never know how it’d be harvested, the vat he helped fill would ferment into ubiquitous flight we take for granted today. Attaining liftoff usually requires a runway.
Like a trail thru the sea oats, this note has been an aimless trek. Since I started, it’s taken me outdoors, to savor the most of this lovely resort. The air is soft, my coffee warm, the breeze cool. Off the back patio, the ripples shimmer as the river comes alive.
As always, the best times have been with my wife… over a round of golf at the Plantation Course, cocktails and dinner overlooking the ocean, or a soothing stroll along the beach.
It’s essential to seek and seize these moments. Like many Americans, we don’t do so enough. Far too often, special occasions drift by, waving frantically as we look the other way.
JD
PS - For observations and perspectives about places around the world, please consider the book I published earlier this year:
