Cumberland Island is a beautiful and exotic sanctuary, bustling with wildlife activity far -- though not geographically -- from the hustle and bustle of human activity.

It is probably best known nationally as the low-profile setting for the high-profile wedding of John Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette in September 1996. The island is also known for wildlife, particularly the feral horses, said to be left behind by Spanish missionaries in the mid-1500s.

According to the Ice House Museum near the Dungeness dock (which is the first of the two stops the St. Mary's ferry makes), humans were living on Cumberland Island as far back as 2,000 B.C.E. Native Americans, Spanish soldiers and missionaries, English colonials and Civil War-era Plantation owners have all settled the island at points but never to such an extent as to leave significant traces behind.

The feral horses, piles of oyster shells called "middens" (left behind by the Timucuan Indians, who subsisted largely on oysters) and ruins of an estate called Dungeness are relics from the past. But beyond those and a few other Carnegie estates (including what is now the genteel Greyfield Inn, Plum Orchard mansion, Stafford and the Grange), today's Cumberland Island probably does not look terribly different from the Cumberland Island of 4,000 years ago. There are permanent residents who own land but they are concentrated on the north end of the island.

The National Park Service bought most of the island in 1972 and established the Cumberland Island National Seashore. The 17-mile-long (27-kilometer-long) island is accessible with a six-month advance reservation; it used to be one year. Only 300 people a day are allowed to journey to Cumberland.