New mansions could be built on Cumberland Island

Jessica Howell-Edwards first visited Cumberland Island as a teenager, about 30 years ago. “I was like every other visitor,” she says. “I was enamored by the horses, and I was enamored by the moss and the trees.” Eventually, she gained confidence to go camping. First with friends, then alone. She says it was a significant part of her development. ​“I feel like if I have needed a place as restorative as Cumberland, my kids will too,” Howell-Edwards says. Today, Howell-Edwards is part of Wild Cumberland, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the island from development. And she fears that a proposal to allow large houses on the island could endanger its future. ​In 1972, Congress established Cumberland Island National Seashore. A public law restricted development, with the intention of keeping Georgia’s largest barrier island “permanently preserved in its primitive state” apart from some recreational areas. ​Families were living on the island then, until they gave up their