Glynn County is located in the
southeastern part of the
U.S. state of
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States
Georgia may also refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Georgia (name), a list of pe ...
. As of the
2020 census, the population was 84,499. The
county seat
A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or parish (administrative division), civil parish. The term is in use in five countries: Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, and the United States. An equiva ...
is
Brunswick.
Glynn County is part of the Brunswick, Georgia
Metropolitan Statistical Area.
History
Glynn County, one of the state's original eight counties created on February 5, 1777, was named after
John Glynn, a member of the British House of Commons who defended the cause of the American Colonies before the
American Revolution
The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a colonial rebellion and war of independence in which the Thirteen Colonies broke from British America, British rule to form the United States of America. The revolution culminated in the American ...
. The
Battle of Bloody Marsh was fought in Glynn County.
James Oglethorpe
Lieutenant-General James Edward Oglethorpe (22 December 1696 – 30 June 1785) was a British Army officer, Tory politician and colonial administrator best known for founding the Province of Georgia in British North America. As a social refo ...
built
Fort Frederica, which was used a base in the American Revolutionary War.
Glynn Academy, established to educate boys, is the second oldest school in Georgia.
Glynn County includes the most prominent of the Sea Islands of Georgia, including
Jekyll Island,
St. Simons Island, and
Sea Island. The Georgia poet
Sidney Lanier immortalized the seacoast there in his poem, "
The Marshes of Glynn", which begins:
:Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven
:With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven
:Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,--
::Emerald twilights,--
::Virginal shy lights,
:Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows,
:When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades
:Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,
:Of the heavenly woods and glades,
:That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within
::The wide sea-marshes of Glynn;--
During World War II,
Naval Air Station Glynco, named for the county, was a major base for training for
blimp
A non-rigid airship, commonly called a blimp (Help:IPA/English, /blɪmp/), is an airship (dirigible) without an internal structural framework or a keel. Unlike semi-rigid airship, semi-rigid and rigid airships (e.g. Zeppelins), blimps rely on th ...
s and
anti-submarine warfare
Anti-submarine warfare (ASW, or in the older form A/S) is a branch of underwater warfare that uses surface warships, aircraft, submarines, or other platforms, to find, track, and deter, damage, or destroy enemy submarines. Such operations ar ...
. The
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) now uses a substantial part of the former NAS as its main campus.
Geography
According to the
U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (28.3%) is water.
The majority of Glynn County is located in the
Cumberland-
St. Simons sub-basin of the
St. Marys- Satilla River basin. Most of the county's northern and northwestern border area is located in the
Altamaha River sub-basin of the basin by the same name.
Major highways
* (Interstate 95)
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* (unsigned designation for I-95)
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Adjacent counties
*
McIntosh County - north
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Camden County - southwest
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Brantley County - west
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Wayne County - northwest
Communities
City
*
Brunswick
Census-designated places
*
Country Club Estates
*
Dock Junction
*
Everett
*
Jekyll Island, Georgia (CDP)
*
St. Simons
*
Sterling
Unincorporated communities
*
Altamaha Park
*
Anguilla
Anguilla is a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean. It is one of the most northerly of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles, lying east of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and directly north of Sa ...
*
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the is ...
*
Jewtown
*
Zuta
Ghost towns
*
Belle Vista
*
Bladen
*
Thalmann
Demographics
As of the
2020 United States census, there were 84,499 people, 34,614 households, and 22,352 families residing in the county.
2015
In terms of European ancestry, 40.8% were
English, 10.6% were
"American", 10.2% were
Irish, and 7.9% were
German.
Education
Glynn County's public schools are operated by
Glynn County School System.
Superfund sites
Glynn County is home to four
Superfund
Superfund is a United States federal environmental remediation program established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). The program is administered by the United States Environmental Pro ...
sites. Those include the "LCP Chemicals Georgia" site, the "Brunswick Wood Preserving" site, the "Hercules 009 Landfill" site, and the "Terry Creek Dredge Spoil Areas/Hercules Outfall" site.
The Hanlin Group, Inc., which maintained a facility named "LCP Chemicals" in Glynn County just outside the corporate limits of Brunswick, was convicted of dumping 150 tons of
mercury into Purvis Creek, a tributary of the
Turtle River and surrounding tidal marshes between the mid-1980s and its closure in 1994. Three executives were sentenced to prison time over the incident.
The LCP facility had been declared a
Superfund
Superfund is a United States federal environmental remediation program established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). The program is administered by the United States Environmental Pro ...
site when it closed in 1994. It had been under scrutiny by the
EPA after Service
biologists discovered
mercury poisoning in endangered
wood storks on
St. Simons Island. Fish, shellfish, crabs, and shrimps taken in coastal waters, as well as other bird species, also contained the toxic metal. The Service traced the source of the contamination to the LCP plant and documented the extent of the damage to wildlife resources. Their effort resulted in the addition of
Endangered Species Act
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA; 16 U.S.C. § 1531 et seq.) is the primary law in the United States for protecting and conserving imperiled species. Designed to protect critically imperiled species from extinction as a "consequence of e ...
charges to those that would be brought against Hanlin and its officers.
Crime
In 2020, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...
ranked the Brunswick metropolitan area (which includes the counties of Glynn,
Brantley and
McIntosh) as the 7th most dangerous metropolitan area in the state of Georgia.
On August 29, 2009, Glynn County resident
Guy Heinze Jr. murdered eight members of his extended family including his father, Guy Heinze Sr. in the family's trailer located in New Hope Plantation Mobile Home Park near Brunswick. Two others were critically injured, with one dying later in a hospital in
Savannah
A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) biome and ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach th ...
. Heinze Jr. avoided the death penalty and was sentenced to life in prison without parole on October 30, 2013.
Politics
Similar to
Southeast Georgia, Glynn County is heavily Republican, having last voted Democratic in
1980
Events January
* January 4 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter proclaims a United States grain embargo against the Soviet Union, grain embargo against the USSR with the support of the European Commission.
* January 6 – Global Positioning Sys ...
, when the Democratic nominee was Georgia native
Jimmy Carter
James Earl Carter Jr. (October 1, 1924December 29, 2024) was an American politician and humanitarian who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party ...
.
See also
*
Glynn County Police Department
*
National Register of Historic Places listings in Glynn County, Georgia
*
List of counties in Georgia
The U.S. state of Georgia is divided into 159 counties, the second-highest number after Texas, which has 254 counties. Under the Georgia State Constitution, all of its counties are granted home rule to deal with problems that are purely loca ...
References
External links
Glynn CountyGlynnCounty.comCoastal Georgia in Photographs and much moreGlynn Countyhistorical marker
Emanuel United Methodist Churchhistorical marker
Needwood Baptist Church and Needwood Schoolhistorical marker
{{Coord, 31.22, -81.49, display=title, type:adm2nd_region:US-GA_source:UScensus1990
Georgia (U.S. state) counties
1777 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state)
Populated places established in 1777
Brunswick metropolitan area