Qualla: Ossabaw Island

Ossabaw Island: Introduction

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The pigs came first, or at least they lasted longest. Spanish explorers released swine on Ossabaw Island in the 16th century, and four hundred years of isolation turned them into something entirely new: the Ossabaw Island Hog, a small, dark-bristled breed with a unique fat-storage metabolism that makes its meat rival the prized jamon iberico of Spain. The pigs outlasted the Spanish missions, the English plantations, the enslaved people who worked them, and the wealthy families who turned the island into a private retreat. They are still there, roaming 26,000 acres of maritime forest, freshwater ponds, and salt marsh twenty miles south of Savannah -- one of Georgia's largest barrier islands and, since 1978, its first Heritage Preserve.

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Ossabaw Island: Four Thousand Years of Oyster Shells

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Pottery shards pulled from Ossabaw's oyster shell middens push human habitation back at least 4,000 years. The Guale people were living on the island when Spanish explorers arrived in the early 16th century, and the relationship between the two groups was characteristically compl...

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Ossabaw Island: The Plantation and Its Shadows

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

John Morell, Bourquin's son-in-law, used enslaved people to farm and timber Ossabaw Island. At his death the island was divided into four plantations, and his will listed 155 enslaved people inherited by his three surviving sons. The plantation economy shaped the island's landsca...

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Ossabaw Island: Sandy West's Extraordinary Gamble

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Eleanor "Sandy" Torrey West inherited her family's island paradise and decided to give it away -- on her terms. In the early 1960s she founded the Ossabaw Island Project, opening her home to artists, writers, scientists, and thinkers. Ralph Ellison, Margaret Atwood, Annie Dillard...

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Ossabaw Island: Wild Things on a Preserved Shore

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Today Ossabaw Island has no bridge, no causeway, and no casual visitors. The general public must apply for permission to visit, and access is by boat only. Loggerhead sea turtles nest on its beaches, monitored by researchers who track one of Georgia's most important nesting popul...

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