Ossabaw Island

Ossabaw Island is a barrier island about ten miles long and eight miles wide, lying a few miles off the Georgia coast south of Savannah. Of its roughly 25,000 acres, 8,996 are high ground covered mostly by second-growth forest, with the rest marsh. People have used the island continuously for some 4,000 years, and surveys have recorded nearly 200 archaeological sites, mostly shell middens with pottery and stone points. The historic plantation divisions of North End, Middle Place, Buckhead and South End remain, along with eight historic landings and a main road said to date from the 1760s. At North End stand a clubhouse, boarding house, tabby oyster house and three tabby slave or tenant houses. East of these is the Main House, built in 1924-1926 in Spanish Revival style with pink stucco walls, a red-tile roof, 16 bedrooms and imported tile, set among remains of formal gardens. The district was listed for this combined prehistoric, plantation and early twentieth-century record.