The islands of the South Atlantic coast of North America at first contact
by Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner
Work is still continuing on the state-of-art virtual reality models of St. Augustine, Florida in 1586 and Fuerte Apache in the Nacoochee Valley of Georgia around 1654. In the meantime, there will be slide shows of extraordinary photographs of Cumberland Island, before it entered the National Park System, plus the virtual reality images of St. Catherines Island, Georgia in the 1500s AD.
Photo Above: Steps left by Georgia Tech students Craig Duvall, Woody Thompson and Richard Thornton on the mile-wide beach of uninhabited Cumberland Island, after coming ashore in their catamaran.
Two months after returning from Mexico, some Georgia Tech Frat buddies and I kidnapped Georgia’s notorious segregationist governor, Lester Maddox, from his office in the State Capitol then hauled him away in the Georgia Tech Rambling Wreck. LOL
In February 1971, newly elected Governor Jimmy Carter was so impressed by my solution to the “Maddox Problem” that he appointed me to be one of his original college interns. I was assigned to what is now the Department of Natural Resources. Its big project at the time, was assembling properties on Cumberland Island in order to donate the entire island to the Federal government.
A former superstar in the development of the first nuclear submarines, Jimmy was also secretly working on establishment near Cumberland of the Kings Bay Nuclear Submarine Base. Being a Midshipman, I was probably the only Governor’s Intern, who knew about that hidden agenda.
In mid-August 1971, after my internship was officially over, Jimmy asked two buddies and I to survey and photograph a maritime jungle in the southern part of Cumberland Island that had been missed by regular state employees, because it was not accessible by Jeep. This was supposed to require a long weekend, but instead turned into a 2 1/2 week long adventure. We were trapped on the uninhabited island, when a high tide ruined our radio and then a tornado wrecked our camp and catamaran . . . forcing us to live off the land. We barely made it back in time to start fall quarter at Tech. That interesting time in my life is described in the book. The Lord of Cumberland, published by Lulu Press.
Here is an example of the exotic scenery that you are going to see.
The Americas Revealed 