St. Catherines Island is one of the Sea Islands on the coast of Georgia, 50 miles (80 km) south of Savannah in Liberty County. The privately-held island is ten miles long and from one to three miles wide; more than half of its 14,640 acres (59 km²) are tidal marsh and wetlands.

The island has been inhabited for at least 4000 years, and was a Guale settlement by 1576. By 1587 it include the Atlantic Coast's northernmost Spanish outpost.

In 1766 the island was leased by Button Gwinnett. It was run as a plantation for nearly a century, until the Civil War ended, and for some time afterwards, though in 1868 the newly freed slaves of the plantation were forced to relocate to White Bluff, Georgia.

In 1943 Edward John Noble bought the island; ten years after his death in 1958, and in 1968 the island was transferred to the Edward J. Noble Foundation.

External links

• Human History of St. Catherines, from the website of the St. Catherines Sea Turtle Program
• St Catherines, from a Ohio State University website
• Bronx Zoo to remove hundreds of animals from St. Catherines Island, a December 2004 article from the Macon Telegraph