Photos: Top -- Tourist train in St. Augustine, FL. Bottom -- Abandoned Dungeness mansion once owned by the Carnegie family and now populated by the horses the family abandoned there.
The other day, I was at the Cumberland Island National Seashore in St. Marys, GA. It is a place of history dating back to the earliest times that Europeans came to North America. Originally, the Spanish controlled the island and they “encouraged” the local Indian tribe to farm as well as hunt. Following the American Revolution, the island was given to war hero General Nathanael Greene, who cut down almost all of the live oak trees to sell to the Navy for building ships, including “Old Ironsides”. After the island was deforested, Greene’s widow turned the island into a sea cotton plantation. But after her death, the island was abandoned and the live oaks and other vegetation came back. By the late 1800s, members of steel robber baron Andrew Carnegie’s family re-settled the island and built an incredible mansion. Eventually, the family left the area but still owned the island. While under a caretaker, the mansion was burned to the ground.
The only evidence of human habitat remains a few buildings used by the national park service and the ruins of the mansion and its adjacent buildings. It is considered a dangerous place and is and will be uncared for until it completely collapses. However, the lush lawn outside the ruins is kept trimmed and fertilized by the descendants of the horses the Carnegies left on the island. There are about 200 of them there living as wild animals. I was stunned by the contrast in their unkempt appearance and the beautiful animals we care for.
This is a place where nature continues to triumph over mankind.
The place I visited today was far different. Have you ever been to St. Augustine? It’s the first European settlement in North America. Here, the remains of a fort still stand, as well as some pieces here and there of the original settlement. But this is a place where tourist traps rule. Here is the original Ripley’s Believe it or Not museum. And there are other museums and attractions based on little historical evidence, such as the location of the fountain of youth. It’s the worst of everything in Orlando and Las Vegas combined.
One such example is the tourist train I took. For $21.99, you board a train and are taken to dozens of different stops, many of them museums, as the guide shares memories of the town. I was especially enraged when told about the black community and how Martin Luther King and baseball hero “Frankie” (not Jackie) Robinson held a civil rights rally. I had met Jackie Robertson as a small boy and, despite my being a Yankee fan, he was a hero to me. At night the trains become ghost hunters, a tour of haunted places.
Here, mankind and his greed have taken over like a cancer with no end in sight.
There are a few persons, those I consider survivors (perhaps including myself), who find a great deal of humor and irony in this. What do you think?
