Current Land Ownership
Cumberland Island is really two islands—the island proper and Little Cumberland Island—connected by a marsh. Little Cumberland is privately owned and not generally open to the public. Historically, Cumberland Island was in private hands, but large areas were deeded to the National Parks Foundation by members or heirs of the Carnegie family in 1971. Other lands in private ownership were purchased with funds provided by the Mellon Foundation and Congress, and in 1972 Cumberland Island was designated a national seashore. A small number of people—principally descendants of property owners—still have houses on the western and northern regions of the island, though only a very few people actually live year-round on the island. Many, however, have sold their property to the National Park Service (NPS), which in turn leases the property back to the former landowners during their lifetime. Eventually, the property will revert to the Park Service and become part of the national seashore.
Read more about this topic: Cumberland Island
Famous quotes containing the words current, land and/or ownership:
“Gradually the village murmur subsided, and we seemed to be embarked on the placid current of our dreams, floating from past to future as silently as one awakes to fresh morning or evening thoughts.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes. It was from facing this vast hardness that the boy’s mouth had become so bitter; because he felt that men were too weak to make any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“They had their fortunes to make, everything to gain and nothing to lose. They were schooled in and anxious for debates; forcible in argument; reckless and brilliant. For them it was but a short and natural step from swaying juries in courtroom battles over the ownership of land to swaying constituents in contests for office. For the lawyer, oratory was the escalator that could lift a political candidate to higher ground.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)