Jekyll Island Club: Birthplace of Bogalusa.

The Jekyll Island Club was an exclusive club which afforded members the opportunity to meet in private to discuss business activities. Frank Goodyear joined the Club at the twilight of his career. Frank used his membership in the club to develop the Great Southern Lumber Company's very structure and role in society. His membership in the Jekyll Island Club afforded him easy access to the very business leaders who ran this Nation during the time Bogalusa was developed. In our opinion they viewed Bogalusa as a model to exhibit the economic and social advantages which could be developed when all powers of industry, government and labor were conbined into one unified entity controlled by business leaders.

Their Gilded Cage: The Jekyll Island Club Members
From the introduction---

When one reads the careers of the Jekyll Island Club members, male and female, outlined in this book, one can imagine the extraordinary conversations that took place and the ideas and plans that were born in the clubhouse parlors or on its wide veranda. In fact, Dr. Walter Belknap James, who was club president during the 1920's, once commented that the "the real core of Jekyll Island's great days was to be found in the men's after dinner talks. It was always of great things, of visions, and of developing. If they didn't have a map of the United States before them, they had a map of industry or financial empires in their minds. Even today, there is scarcely an aspect of modern business or economics that they did not impact in some important way.

My brother, Frank, writes from his winter home on Jekyll Island, where he is making his annual visit to get away from the wretched weather which we have up here at this time of the year, that he was fortunate in meeting James J. Hill, who with George F. Baker, J. P. Morgan and other
financiers were wont to gather in the clubhouse in the late afternoons for their customary drinks of Scotch and soda. Apparently Mr. Hill was very much interested in our plans for building a railroad from Lake Pontchartrain to Jackson, Mississippi. Advice from an empire builder like James J. Hill, who has achieved such outstanding success in developing the Northwest, did not go unheeded, with the result that we have decided to construct our railroad with long tangents straight up the Pearl River Valley through the heart of our timberlands.

Their names are the names of legend: Morgan, Pulitzer, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and the lives they lived were the envy of the masses. Richard J. Hutto tells the story of the men and women of the Jekyll Island Club and the effect they had on the U.S. economy, on politics, arts, education, and culture not only in their lifetimes, but in the many years since. The decisions they made over drinks in the evening while vacationing far away from the city lights affected all Americans. This fascinating account of who they were and what they did is delightful reading, entertaining while informing about a unique chapter in American history and the exclusive group of men who made it.

The Jekyll Island Club Hotel represents the height of the Club era. The Victorian-style clubhouse was completed in 1888, and the Annex – a complex of eight privately owned apartments -- was completed in 1901. The Club operated from January through April each winter from 1888 to 1942. At one point, it is estimated that the members of the Jekyll Island Club controlled 1/6 of the country’s wealth. As such, some events that shaped our nation occurred at this very site. The first transcontinental telephone call was placed from Jekyll by AT&T president Theodore Vail, a Club member, to President Woodrow Wilson and Alexander Graham Bell. In 1907, the hotel served as the location of a secret meeting that led to the development of the Federal Reserve System. Historic District Cottages. From 1888- 1928 members also constructed fourteen cottages in the location we now know as the Historic District.