St Simons Welcome Sign
A handy guide to some local lingo and lore to help you navigate the island and understand the natives.
Causeways and bridges are not the same thing. A causeway is a raised road or track across low or wet grounds. The F.J. Torras Causeway is the road connecting St. Simons Island to the Brunswick mainland. It is named for it’s main engineer, who also served as Brunswick’s city manager for more than 30 years. There are two bridges on the causeway, the Back River Bridge and the Mackay River bridge. The Jekyll Island causeway connects Jekyll Island to the Brunswick mainland, and is near the foot of the Sidney Lanier Bridge. The large cable-stayed bridge spanning the Brunswick River was named after poet Sidney Lanier who penned the poem “Marshes of Glynn.” When you hear “There’s a wreck on the causeway,” it’s likely the Torras Causeway they’re talking about. Please watch your speed, don’t drive distracted, and make sure all loads and trailers are secure. When people talk about “the bridge,” it’s generally the Sidney Lanier Bridge to which they’re referring (even if they call it “the bridge to Jekyll”).
Demere is pronounced dem’-ree, not deh-mare as the French might say it. The street is named for Captain Raymond Demere who arrived on the island in 1736 and played a key role in pre-plantation history.
Frederica has four syllables: fred-er-ee’-kah. This was the name bestowed on the fort on the north end of the island to honor Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales, on September 26, 1735.
Mallery or Mallory? There’s some confusion about the spelling of name of this road in the Village. It seems the definitive answer can be found in 1890 records regarding the first residential land development project on St. Simons Island: King City. Virginia Lord King Nesbet owned half of Retreat Plantation, while her brother, Mallery Page King, held the remaining half in trust for his three daughters. He had a portion of Retreat land along St. Simons Sound, from Mallery Street westward to the current Sea Island Golf Club, laid out into streets between Page Avenue and Butler Avenue and divided up into homesites and a larger commercial site reserved for a hotel. The King City streets were named for family members and other close island families. Page Avenue was named for his grandfather, Butler and Lord Avenues were named for his brothers, then Floyd, Cuyler, Georgia, Florence, and Virginia for the King children, and Hamilton, Frazer, Wylly, and Gould for the other island families. Thus, it stands to reason that the street that began it all was named after its creator.
Neptune Park, despite its view overlooking the ocean, was not named to honor the god of the sea. It was dedicated to the memory of Neptune Small (1831-1907), a man born into slavery on Retreat Plantation. He served Thomas Butler King and accompanied his sons into battle during the Civil War. When Henry Lord Page King was killed in battle in 1862, he located and retrieved his body from the battlefield and accompanied him to Savannah, where a temporary burial location was secured until the area was once again safe after the war. Although he been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, Small returned to the front to serve the youngest King son until the surrender of the Confederate troops in 1865. Small then returned to Savannah to accompany Lord King’s body back to his final resting place at Christ Church Cemetery on St. Simons Island. The Kings granted Neptune a parcel of property on their land where he lived as a free man. Today, the park rests on what used to be part of that property.
Redfern is one word and was not named for any scarlet leaved botanicals, but for a young pilot named Paul Redfern. Redfern departed Sea Island in his Stinson-Detroiter monoplane “Port of Brunswick,” on August 25, 1927 in an attempt to make a solo non-stop flight from here to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. If he succeeded, he would break Charles Lindbergh’s distance record by 1,000 miles. His solo flight time would have been more than 50 hours compared with Lindbergh’s 33.5 He tragically never made it to his destination. His plane was last spotted 200 miles off the coast of South America.
The Village means the shopping and dining area near The Pier (this is the one islanders refer to when they say that) close to the lighthouse on the south end of St. Simons Island. You may also hear it called Pier Village. It does not refer to Redfern Village, the mid-island hotspot for shopping and dining.
