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Offering a rich blend of distant past and recent history, this 10-mile long island of 14,000 acres is owned and managed by the St. Catherines Island Foundation. In a cooperative effort with the New York Zoological Society, the island's interior, off-limits to the public, is in part a survival center of last resort for endangered species from around the world. Once the populations of these rare animals recover, they are then returned to zoos or to the wild.
Registered as a National Historic Landmark in 1970, St. Catherines was the hunting grounds of the coastal Guale Indians and the site of a Spanish Mission called Santa Catalina de Guale. Button Gwinnet, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, established a plantation on the island. After the Civil War, a black separatist movement took root here.
As the years passed, St. Catherines, like many of coastal Georgia's barrier islands, saw a progression of owners who used it primarily as a hunting preserve until it was conveyed to its present custodian. The beach on St. Catherines is open to the public with access by private boat from nearby Half Moon Marina on Colonel's Island or Shellman Fish Camp in McIntosh County.