The wild island depicted in Love Story is fighting to stay that way

Jessica Howell Edwards is standing in the grass near the First African Baptist Church on Georgia’s Cumberland Island. This one-room pinewood chapel was established in the 1890s, but it has been thrust into the spotlight again by the record-breaking limited series, Love Story, which depicts the day John F. Kennedy, Jr., married Carolyn Bessette here 30 years ago this September. (Love Story is produced for FX, which shares a parent company with National Geographic.)

Edwards bends down to adjust her boot—and freezes in terror. The church is surrounded by thousands of acres of maritime forest wilderness on the island’s remote north end. And now, some eight inches from her bare hand, a coiled Diamondback rattlesnake, beautiful and venomous, is poised to strike. She retreats, steadily. “You don’t forget a close call like that,” she says.

Edwards is the executive director of Wild Cumberland, one of several environmental organizations working to conserve this vast barrier island off the Georgia–Florida coast. She’s grown accustomed to hair-raising wildlife encounters.

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Across Cumberland’s 36,000-plus acres are upwards of 20 distinct habitats and ecosystems, including salt marshes, maritime forest, freshwater wetlands, dunes, and the state’s longest stretch of undeveloped beach. Together, this uniquely expansive swirl of landscape hosts more than 500 plant species and some 385 animal species, including bobcats, armadillos, and loggerhead sea turtles. The island inspires awe, Edwards says. And travelers will want to arrive knowing what they’re getting into: There are also unpredictable wild boar and feral horses, sizable alligators, ticks, swarming gnats, and soaring summer temperatures—not to mention the absence of any public amenities.

“If you go there expecting to be anything but humbled,” she says, “you’re going to the wrong place.”

Now, it’s the island’s less humble past that is attracting a new wave of interest. Love Story’s popularity has spurred a surge of inquiries about visiting the island where the famous couple exchanged vows.

Mary and Mitty Ferguson recall fending off waves of calls from press and paparazzi at the time of the 1996 wedding. The couple are owner-operators of the intimate Greyfield Inn, a Cumberland visitor’s sole source of creature comforts, including the island’s only restaurant and bar. This is where John and Carolyn’s guests stayed and celebrated their wedding reception. This year, Mary says, outsiders’ questions feel “very much the same.”

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However, that surging interest feels different on Cumberland Island than it does at the show’s other real-life locations, for the same reason that Kennedy and Bessette were drawn here in the first place: It is much harder to get to.

Accessible only by boat—the NPS ferry, which requires booking in advance, or the Greyfield’s private shuttle—Cumberland is the country’s least visited national seashore, with, per NPS data, as few as a hundred tourists a day in the low season, spread out across an island more than twice the size of Manhattan. It’s an experience that’s hard to find anywhere else in the U.S.—and one that requires extra planning and care.

Land and legacy

The effort to maintain Cumberland Island as an untouched wilderness dates back decades: The National Park Service eyed island for conservation as early as the 1950s, but the campaign to protect it ramped up the following decade, when one landowning family sold about 3,000 acres to a real estate magnate who had recently developed stretches of Hilton Head, South Carolina.

At the prospect of condos and resorts—and even talk of a roadway from the mainland—landowners, conservation nonprofits, and Congress members banded together to seek permanent federal protection. The resulting 1972 NPS legislation dictated the island would be preserved "in its primitive state,” with no development "incompatible with the preservation of the unique flora and fauna." In the 1980s, the NPS went a step further, capping visitation to 300 people a day.

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Now some 320-plus bird species—from upland songbirds like painted buntings to unusual species like elusive Chuck-will's-widows—rely on the island, says Sarah Manning, Conservation Coordinator at Birds Georgia. You won’t see these species breeding at scale on developed islands like nearby St. Simons or Jekyll. But on Cumberland, low human disturbance—low noise, lighting, sparse, permit-only use of motorized vehicles, and a total lack of stores, gas stations, paved roads, public restrooms, trash disposal, and other amenities—make it possible.

While this lack of civilization is attractive, it can also pose a challenge for visitors.

Molly Silver, proprietor of Molly’s Old South Tours, the only guided-tour operator on the island's south end, said interest is clearly ticking upward. "We’ve definitely been getting more inquiries,” she notes. “And especially more inquiries about the First Baptist African Church, of course.”

Silver offers walking tours on the opposite end of the island, on beach and trails easily accessible from the public ferry dock. The church, however, is a day-long hike away. So unless you’ve booked a seat in advance on the island’s lone Lands and Legacies van tour (a bumpy, six-hour round trip), or you’re staying at the Greyfield (which has its own small, weathered fleet of vehicles), it’s not reachable. At least, not without hauling your own water, food, sunscreen, bug spray, and other supplies along the island’s lone rutty sand road.

“A lot of folks think that they're going to be able to make it either by foot or on bikes,” Edwards says. “Most people will never make it that far.”

Even the Love Story production didn’t dare try. It was easier to meticulously recreate the setting from scratch on a Hudson Valley farm than it was to bring the production to Cumberland, considering the absence of an airport or crew base among other factors, an executive producer told Glamour. Instead of shooting the oyster roast scene on site at the Greyfield, Love Story used a Long Island Gold Coast mansion.

But the solitude the Kennedys sought may be at risk, according to regional conservation groups. In 2022, the NPS proposed a plan to more than double the 300-daily-visitors limit, with suggestions for additional ferry routes and even the construction of a general store. This has spurred controversy. In a February letter on behalf of 15 organizations, including Wild Cumberland and Birds Georgia, Southern Environmental Law Center attorney Zachary Hennessee noted this would be the biggest change to park management in over 40 years.

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Landowners are concerned about these changes too, including Mitty Ferguson’s sister Gogo Ferguson, who was close with the Kennedys, helping John plan the secret nuptials. A jewelry designer who keeps a studio beside the Greyfield full of found objects from the island, she cast their gold wedding bands from the ribs of a rattlesnake. Having grown up with the island’s rich flora and fauna and with its immersive sense of wildness, she feels these changes could fundamentally transform the feeling of being there.

"What makes Cumberland such a unique experience is that you rarely feel there are too many people," she says. “To be comfortable on your own is such an important lesson in life—one that this island has given all of us.”

Leave a light footprint

Manning at Birds Georgia believes Cumberland’s wildlife relies on minimal human interference—part of why it’s so important that travelers stick to the trails when they visit. “There's human footprints everywhere,” she says, but “those habitats are sensitive and fragile—especially the beach and the shore.”

On the beach, Manning advises walking only on the firm, wet sand near the water: Keep off the dunes where delicate root systems of state-protected sea oats prevent erosion, and federally protected species of turtles and birds have nests that are so camouflaged or tucked away, they’re nearly invisible.

Visitors will want to keep their distance from animals—including the horses, which have been known to seriously injure tourists. Officials also ask tourists to obey "shorebird area" signage, keep your distance from flocks of birds—who may have flown thousands of miles to set down on Cumberland’s coast—fill in any holes you dig, and pack out all your refuse. Wild Cumberland sums this up as "leave no trace.”

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This extends even to things so ephemeral as sound and light: At night during nesting season, fauna rely on the island’s dark skies: White light from a headlamp, flashlight, or even a cell phone screen can scare a nesting female sea turtle back into the sea or lead hatchlings away from the surf. Responsible travelers should bring a red filter with them to cover up any light they might need to walk around at night.

Civilization’s “light footprint” here is part of what makes this place singular, Mary Ferguson says. And it’s not always what people come expecting, she adds. “I do think some guests have been surprised that the Kennedys would have loved and embraced a place that is so wild.”