Connected to the mainland by a causeway, Jekyll Island, the smallest of Georgia's coastal islands with 5,600 acres of highlands and 10,000 acres of marshland, was favored by Native Americans for hunting and fishing. Spanish missionaries arrived in the late 16th and early 17th centuries and established a mission. In 1734, during an expedition southward, General James Oglethorpe passed by the island and named it for his friend and financial supporter, Sir Joseph Jekyll. Later, William Horton, one of Oglethorpe's officers, established a plantation on the island.

Horton's land grant passed to several owners before the island was sold to Christophe du Bignon, a Frenchman who was escaping the French Revolution. It remained in the du Bignon family as a plantation for almost a century. In 1858, the slave ship Wanderer arrived at the island and unloaded the last major cargo of slaves ever to land in the US. In 1886, John Eugene du Bignon sold the island to a group of wealthy businessmen from the northeast, who formed the Jekyll Island Club.

Club members who wintered at Jekyll in exclusive privacy from early January to early April included J. P. Morgan, William Rockefeller, Edwin Gould, Joseph Pulitzer, and R. T. Crane, Jr. Some built fabulous "cottages," many of which are still standing. But by World War II, the club had been abandoned for economic and social reasons, and in 1947, the island was sold to the state. The Jekyll Island Authority was created to conserve beaches and manage the island while maintaining it as a year-round resort.