Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Jekyll Island, GA

Jekyll Island is a barrier island in Glynn County, Georgia — one of the Sea Islands and one of the Golden Isles — and it was first listed as a census-designated place in the 2020 census.

The 2020 census counted just 866 permanent residents on Jekyll Island.

The entire island is owned by the State of Georgia and run by the self-sustaining, self-governing Jekyll Island Authority.

The island was used seasonally by indigenous peoples, including the Guale and Mocama, and plantations were developed on it during the British colonial period, leaving a few surviving structures built of tabby, a coastal material made with crushed oyster shells.

In 1886 a group of wealthy northern businessmen — among them J.P. Morgan, Joseph Pulitzer, and William Vanderbilt — bought the island and created the Jekyll Island Club, an exclusive winter retreat whose members were said at their peak to represent a sixth of the world's wealth.

The club's grand clubhouse and large winter "cottages" survive today as the island's Landmark Historic District, with guided tours available.

In November 1910, leading members of the American financial sector, including Paul Warburg and members of J.P. Morgan's circle, met in secret on Jekyll Island to draft central-bank legislation that later influenced the Federal Reserve Act.

The island was evacuated during World War II by order of the U.S. government.

On October 7, 1947, the State of Georgia acquired the whole island through condemnation for $675,000, and Jekyll Island opened to the public as a state park in 1948 — declared "a playground that now belongs to every Georgian."

Because it is a state park, development on Jekyll Island is permanently capped: no more than about 35 percent of the island's roughly 5,700 acres can ever be developed, and residents own their houses but lease the land from the state.