31·81: The Magazine of Jekyll Island

Meet Josh Rachel, Jekyll Brewing’s Brewmaster

Josh Rachel believes that every brewer falls in love with a certain aspect of the beer-making process. Some are obsessed with the chemistry involved....

Latest Stories

Master of the Craft

As she does most years, Yvonne Grovner hosted a three-hour basketmaking class last February for snowbirds and other visitors at the Jekyll Island Campground. As usual, the class was full.Under her watchful eye, Grovner’s two dozen pupils that day—like those she continues to teach in places around Georgia and...

Midden Treasure: Uncovering Jekyll Island’s Past in What’s Left Behind

What’s disposed of, lost, or left behind can explain a lot about a society. Archaeologists have discovered as much in Jekyll Island’s middens, heaps of long-ago tossed-out kitchen scraps, seashells and other buried treasures scattered around the island.Each midden is a tapestry revealing how the Guale and Mocama tribes...

In The Service of Others

Jekyll Island has many different histories, from the modern State Era, when Jekyll opened as a State Park, back through the Plantation and Colonial Eras, back even further, thousands of years ago, to the time that the Mocama and other Native Americans settled here. The island’s best-known and most...

Jekyll Island Is Always On The Clock

Noon or night, somebody on Jekyll Island is always on the clock—whether you see it or not. Follow this 24-hour journey across Jekyll, from a sea turtle center to a water treatment plant, and get a behind-the-scenes look at everything happening on the island at all hours of the...

The Indispensable Horseshoe Crab

Freaking out is understandable when encountering a horseshoe crab on the beach. After all, these ancient creatures have five pairs of legs, ten eyes, long spiky tails, and mouths on the bottom of their shells. They're the incarnate version of those things inside the robot suits on Dr. Who,...

Jekyll Island’s Most Beloved Recreational Pursuits

At the Jekyll Island Club Resort (established 1888), guests can swing a croquet mallet on the front lawn, take high tea in the Grand Dining Room, and immerse themselves in a Victorian fairytale in the surrounding Historic District. When America’s wealthiest families wintered on Jekyll a century ago, they...

Where to Stay, Jekyll Style

Jekyll Island’s history as an exclusive, nearly inaccessible club for only the most well-heeled of American families is a fascinating footnote to what is now an inclusive and well-preserved resort for visitors of all walks of life. Though some of the mansion-sized “cottages” from that bygone era still stand,...

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about 31·81

Published twice a year, 31·81 pairs stunning photography with thoughtful articles to tell the stories of Georgia’s unique barrier island. Jekyll Island lies at 31 degrees north latitude and 81 degrees west longitude.
 

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PATHS: Stargazing

Photograph by Brian Austin Lee

Leave the street lights behind. Stow your glowing phone. Step onto the sand and into the dark embrace of a Jekyll Island night. The sea before you is a black void, whispering as it laps gently onto the cool and darkened beach, protected from glare by the island’s exacting lighting ordinance. Now look up. At first, only the brightest stars are visible. But as your eyes adjust, there appear to be more stars than sky. Out of an overhead ocean you recognize the formations of the Big and Little Dippers. In the cooler fall and winter, with less humidity and haze, you can clearly spot the tri-star belt of Orion and the enjoined hands of the Gemini twins. You can connect the dots to conform to your imagination or zoom out, behold the Milky Way—a perspective lost to most urban-dwelling Americans—and contemplate your place in the galaxy. —Tony Rehagen