Start near: Savannah (starts here) · Jacksonville (about 55 min to St. Augustine)
US 17 and A1A to the oldest city
Golden Isles & the First Coast is a ~210-mile back-roads route from Savannah to St. Augustine on US 17, GA 99 and FL A1A, driven in 2–3 days, that stays off I-95 through the Atlantic Coast.
Georgia's hundred-mile marsh (Sidney Lanier wrote it an ode) hides Gilded Age ruins, wild horses, a church that seats twelve and the ferry-dependent remnants of Gullah Geechee island life. Cross into Florida for eight flags' worth of Fernandina, a boneyard beach, the last river ferry on A1A — and St. Augustine, where America's oldest city wears its 1565 pedigree under a thick coat of glorious kitsch.
📍 Georgia's coastal markers plus Florida heritage plaques; the Gullah Geechee Corridor continues to the state line and beyond.
Midway's 1792 meetinghouse, the smallest church in America, and Darien's shrimp fleet beside rice-plantation ruins — with the Sapelo ferry spur into living Gullah Geechee history.
A 1792 New England-style meetinghouse in the Georgia pines — its tiny congregation produced two signers of the Declaration. The cemetery's live oaks predate the nation that resulted.
Memory Park Chapel (1949): about a dozen seats, stained glass, door never locked. Rebuilt by donations after a 2015 fire — the congregation is whoever pulls over.
Shrimp boats beside the brick chimney of a rice empire — Fanny Kemble's 1838–39 journal from this plantation helped turn British opinion against slavery. Black Union troops burned the town in 1863, the raid that troubled Glory's Col. Shaw.
Reservation-only ferry to Hogg Hummock — one of the last intact Gullah Geechee communities, holding on against tax pressure and time. Tours by community members; book well ahead, tread gently.
Brunswick's stew pot, St. Simons's tree spirits, Jekyll's millionaire ghosts and driftwood boneyard — then St. Marys, gateway to Cumberland's wild horses.
Brunswick stew's contested birthplace (Virginia objects; the 1898 'original pot' is displayed here regardless) and a working shrimp port. Lover's Oak downtown has hosted courtships for a claimed 900 years.
Faces carved into the live oaks (find them; locals will hint), Fort Frederica's 1736 ruins, and the lighthouse whose keeper's ghost still climbs the stairs, by reliable report.
The Gilded Age's most exclusive club — Morgans and Rockefellers wintering together; the Federal Reserve was secretly drafted here in 1910. Driftwood Beach's oak boneyard at dawn, the Sea Turtle Center after breakfast, and the Wanderer memorial on the south end remembering one of America's last slave ships (1858).
Eight-flag Fernandina and Florida's oldest saloon, Big Talbot's boneyard beach, the little Mayport ferry — and the coquina walls and ancient kitsch of St. Augustine.
Ferry from St. Marys to wild horses grazing the ruins of Carnegie's Dungeness; JFK Jr. married in the one-room First African Baptist chapel at the island's north end (1996). Book the ferry weeks ahead; bring everything, buy nothing — there's nothing to buy.
Florida's oldest continuously operating bar (1903), mahogany and murals intact, in the eight-flags town where the modern shrimping industry was born. Pirate's punch; reasonable people order two.
Salt-bleached oak and cedar skeletons toppled along the bluff — the Atlantic slowly eating the maritime forest, beautifully.
The little St. Johns River ferry keeps A1A unbroken (cars, gulls, five minutes of brine); Singleton's Seafood Shack at the landing fries what the boats brought.
America's oldest city (1565) and its coquina fortress — the shell-stone walls absorbed cannonballs like a sponge; the fort was besieged repeatedly, never taken. Fort Mose, two miles north, was the first legally sanctioned free Black settlement in what's now the US (1738).
Venerable Florida kitsch: the Ponce-themed park has poured sulfurous 'youth' since the early 1900s (peacocks included); the 1893 Alligator Farm keeps every living crocodilian species. Finish with Minorcan clam chowder — datil-pepper heat found nowhere else.
Golden Isles & the First Coast is about 210 miles and takes 2–3 days at a back-roads pace.
It runs from Savannah to St. Augustine.
It follows US 17, GA 99 and FL A1A.
It avoids I-95, using US 17, GA 99 and FL A1A instead.
13 stops are mapped, including Midway Church, Smallest Church in America, Darien & Butler Island, Sapelo Island (spur) and Brunswick.
The Whole Hog (28 days), Golden Isles Getaway (3 days) and US 17: Outer Banks to Florida (8 days).
The atlas’s seasonal note for this route: “Sea-turtle nesting (May–Oct): Jekyll's center does dawn patrol walks in June–July.”
The Whole Hog (28 days) · Golden Isles Getaway (3 days) · US 17: Outer Banks to Florida (8 days)
Connects with: US 90: The Florida Backbone · Sherman's March to the Sea · Kings Highway & the Lowcountry
More in the Atlantic Coast: Kings Highway & the Lowcountry · Outer Banks & the Sound Country · US 301: The Ghost Road · Sherman's Carolinas Campaign · The Inner Banks · The Northern Neck · VA 5 & the Colonial Parkway · US 13: The Eastern Shore