Tybee Island Weekend: Forts, Sunsets & Little Tybee by Kayak

Fort Pulaski is one of the most important and underappreciated military history sites in America. Built between 1829 and 1847 using 25 million bricks and the early engineering supervision of Robert E. Lee (his first professional assignment), the fort was the definitive example of the masonry coastal fortification that had defended American harbors since the republic's founding. Its 7-foot-thick walls were designed to be impervious to the smoothbore cannon fire of the day. The April 1862 bombardment by Union rifled artillery changed military history in 30 hours. General Gillmore's rifled guns, positioned 1,650 yards from the southeast wall — a range that would have been useless with smoothbore cannon — punched through the brick in repeated blows, each shot following the previous into an enlarging hole in the wall. By the afternoon of the second day, the breach had reached the powder magazine, and Confederate commander Colonel Charles Olmstead had no choice but to surrender before his entire garrison was obliterated. Military planners across the Western world drew the immediate conclusion: masonry fortifications were permanently obsolete. The great age of defensive walls, which stretched back to ancient Rome, was over. The NPS interpretation is excellent, and walking through the breach in the southeast wall — you can see the torn brick and the rebuilt casemates on either side — makes the history visceral in a way that no museum exhibit can equal.

The 1867 Tybee Island Lighthouse — 145 feet tall, 154 cast-iron spiral steps, and the oldest lighthouse site in Georgia — is worth every step of the climb. The lantern gallery at the top commands a 360-degree view: the Atlantic Ocean to the east, the Savannah River entrance and the South Carolina coast to the north, Little Tybee Island's unmarked wilderness to the south, and the Lowcountry marshes stretching westward toward Savannah. The first-order Fresnel lens in the lantern room is a masterpiece of 19th-century optical engineering, its precisely ground and angled prisms focusing the light source into a beam visible 18 miles at sea. The keeper's cottage at the lighthouse base is restored and open, documenting the lives of the lighthouse keepers who tended this light through 19th-century storms and the rigors of isolated coastal service.

A long afternoon on Tybee's south-end beach — reading, swimming, walking the tideline for shells — ending at the 1891 pier to watch the sunset. The westward view from the pier end looks back over the tidal marshes toward Savannah, which sits below the horizon, invisible but for a faint glow. Dolphin sightings from the pier are common in the late afternoon as the animals follow baitfish moving on the tide change.

Little Tybee Island, separated from Tybee by the narrow Tybee Creek inlet, is an uninhabited barrier island roughly twice the size of Tybee that sees a fraction of its visitors — accessible only by water, with no development whatsoever. The morning kayak tour from Tybee's south end crosses Tybee Creek (20 minutes of paddling in calm conditions) and arrives at a wide, wild beach that feels a world away from the developed island behind you. Little Tybee is one of the finest birding locations on the Georgia coast: American oystercatchers nest on the shell bars at the south inlet, displaying their bright orange bills and alarming loudly if you approach their territories; Wilson's plovers run the tideline; laughing gulls, royal terns, and Forster's terns work the shallows; and in migration season — particularly April-May and August-October — the island's wide tidal flats concentrate shorebirds in extraordinary numbers: red knots, dunlins, short-billed dowitchers, and the occasional rarity that Georgia birders drive hours to see. Bottlenose dolphins are commonly encountered in the tidal cut between Tybee and Little Tybee, often approaching kayaks with evident curiosity.

After landing on Little Tybee's beach, walk the tideline in either direction — there is no one else here, no buildings, no sounds except the surf and birds. The beach collects shells at the wrack line in quantities rarely seen on developed Georgia beaches: whelks, conchs, olive shells, calico scallops, and in summer, the occasional sea bean or tropical seed carried north by the Gulf Stream. Bring food for a picnic on the beach.

Return to Tybee for a relaxed afternoon on the beach before heading home — a final swim, a last walk along the pier, and the particular satisfaction of a weekend well spent on the Georgia coast.