From Azaleas to Zydeco: My 4,600-Mile Journey through the South

Coastalitis

Coastalitis In A Southerner Discovers the South, Jonathan Daniels relates a conversation with a Savannah doctor who described the residents of the low country as “the most ignorant, pitiful, and poverty-stricken whites in Georgia….Many of them are scrawny humans hardly fit for oppression …[One] boy, sent to Savannah, had malaria, hookworm, pellagra and from malnutrition his thighbone had pierced his pelvis.” “Coastalitis,” the doctor continued, “is a terrible disease.” Coastalitis, as it was known is the 1930s, is gone now. Modern diets and improved healthcare have taken care of it. The term coastilitis can now have a new definition. Coastilitis describes the change in America’s coastline. There are close to 300 barrier islands off the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of America. Some are mere sandbars; others are relatively large tracts of land containing thousands of acres. Together they form perhaps the most elaborate chain of barrier islands in the world. From New England to Florida, these islands have important functions: providing fishing areas, screening the mainland from big storms, and maintaining estuarial systems. Today, barrier islands provide land for leisure and retirement housing. Handsome entrances to new subdivisions dot the highway from Savannah to Charleston. The closer to the coast, the closer together these developments become. Housing not only has overtaken the mainland’s coastline but also most of the barrier islands which lie just off the coast. 388 A few of Charleston’s suburbs are highly developed barrier islands: James Island, Daniel Island, Sullivan’s Island, and Isle of Palms. Each day, islanders leave their ocean-side retreats and cross bridges to work in Charleston or North Charleston. The commuters constitute a significant portion of the 644,000 residents in the greater Charleston area. Developing barrier islands for recreation is nothing new. One island, Jekyll Island, was owned and operated as a resort for the offspring of the Gilded Age robber barons from the late nineteenth century until World War II. These rich Yankees wintered at Jekyll and were known to the locals simply as “the millionaires.” But the pace of developing these islands has quickened during the past generation. Tybee, Hilton Head, Edisto, and Kiawah are just some of the familiar names of the more developed barrier islands, but there are plenty of others. Not only have more of these islands become developed, but many islands have changed from rural to urban due to the density of the development. Some barrier islands suffer rows of fast-food restaurants and rush-hour traffic congestion. Morris Island is a very small island that has no housing or commuter traffic. The only building on the island is a lighthouse. The east side of Morris Island looks out on the Atlantic Ocean. The west side of the island peers toward the big houses lining the coast of James Island. The north side looks across Fort Sumter to Fort Moultrie and Sullivan Island. The big houses on the developed barrier islands contrast dramatically with the barrenness of the sand and scrub of tiny Morris Island. Morris Island was almost lost to development. In 2004, a developer bought the island to create twenty building lots on Morris Island’s sixtytwo acres. It was to be a very exclusive housing project for the wealthy. When public opposition arose, another developer, the Ginn Company, purchased Morris Island for $6.8 million and gave the Trust for Public Land, a non-profit private land conservation organization, an option to purchase the island for $4.5 million. When the group couldn’t raise that much money, the Ginn Company reduced the option price. In 2008, the Trust for Public Land purchased Morris Island for $3 million from the Ginn Company. When asked why his company would take such a loss to protect a developable piece of property, Bobby Ginn noted the importance of Morris Island. He added that his company had a number of 389 developments in the Charleston area and then said simply, “We’re not a parasite of what’s here.” Morris Island is historic. It’s the actual location where the Civil War hostilities commenced. Here on January 9, 1863, cadets from the Citadel fired on The Star of the West as the ship attempted to come into Charleston’s harbor. This was some three months before Rebel artillery started shelling Fort Sumter. Later, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers, the first African-American unit recruited in the North, attacked Battery Wagner...