Don't look for a swimming pool, tennis courts, or a golf course -- Cumberland's attractions are a different sort, straight out of The Prince of Tides. The inn is just a short walk from those high sand dunes and a wild, undeveloped beach. Beachcombing, swimming, shelling, fishing, and exploring the island are high on the list of activities.
No signs are left of the Native Americans who lived here beginning some 4,000 years ago, nor of the Franciscan missionaries who came to convert them during the 1500s. No ruins exist of the forts built at each end of the island by Gen. James Oglethorpe in the 1700s, and the only thing that remains of his hunting lodge is its name, Dungeness. What you will find as you poke around this island are the ruins of Andrew Carnegie's own massive mansion, Dungeness (which burned in 1959); the Greene-Miller cemetery, which still holds inhabitants from Revolutionary times through the Civil War era; and the Stafford plantation house. Down the lane a bit are "the Chimneys," a melancholy post-Civil War ruin (ask at the inn for the full story); and Plum Orchard, another Carnegie mansion, fully furnished but unoccupied and now the property of the U.S. Park Service.
