Dungeness Historic District: Cultural Landscape Report, Cumberland Island National Seashore, National Park Service

Hitchcock, Susan

The Dungeness Historic District, at the southern end of Cumberland Island, was listed in the National Register in 1984 as part of a multiple resource nomination for CUIS. The contributing resources listed in the nomination include archeological, structural, and landscape features dating to several periods and related to several themes. In addition to the contributing resources listed in 1984, a number of significant landscape resources, primarily vegetation, are managed by the Park. There is also a significant ethnographic component of the district that has yet to be documented. The Dungeness Historic District Cultural Landscape Report documents changes to the landscape over time and evaluates the landscape’s significance in order to provide treatment recommendations for the preservation of its significant features. Cultural landscapes are settings we have created in the natural world. They reveal fundamental ties between people and the land based on our need to grow food, give form to our settlements, meet requirements for recreation, and find suitable places to bury our dead. Landscapes are intertwined patterns of things both natural and constructed: plants and fences, waterways and buildings. They range from formal gardens to historic cotton fields and from cemeteries to settlements. They are special places—expressions of human manipulation and adaptation of the land. The best documentation and evaluation of the landscape resources are in companion reports: The Historic Landscape of Dungeness (1987) and The Landscape Management Plan for Dungeness (1988) written by Lauren Lubin Zeichner. Although neither report is a cultural landscape report (CLR) by definition, the latter document does include treatment recommendations for many of the landscape resources. To date, the Park has not had the money or staff to implement the greater part of the recommendations, but what limited landscape treatment work the Park has undertaken has been supported by these reports. Routine maintenance has not been able to keep up with the loss of landscape features, particularly ornamental vegetation, to the effects of neglect, forest encroachment, and senescence. Other park planning documents consulted include Louis Torres’ historic resource study, David Henderson’s historic structure reports, and several reports done by the Southeast Archeological Center (SEAC). Additional archival research for the CLR was undertaken at the Georgia State Archives in Morrow, Georgia, and CUIS archives. Field work in 2004-2005 updated 1988 Existing Conditions maps. In addition to park planning documents, historian Mary Bullard’s book Cumberland Island: A History and Nancy Carnegie Rockefeller’s The Carnegies & Cumberland Island were valuable resources for the CLR. Also, Larry Dilsaver’s administrative history Cumberland Island National Seashore: A History of Conservation Conflict was consulted for the CLR.

Dungeness Historic District: Cultural Landscape Report, Cumberland Island National Seashore, National Park Service

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