Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 27, 1990 TAG: 9005270329
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: E-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: George & Rosalie Leposky
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
They occupy Dog Island, a 7.5-mile-long spit of sand in the Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles southwest of Tallahassee, Fla. Accessible only by boat or plane, this barrier island off St. George Sound is a retreat popular with Florida politicians. The island's 300 property owners include Lawton Chiles, a former U.S. senator now running for governor, and former Gov. LeRoy Collins.
Visitors to Dog Island can stay in The Pelican Inn, a rustic seven-room beachfront hotel. It's a comfortable base (complete with electricity, fresh water, and a fully equipped kitchen) from which to hike through the woods, stroll the beaches gathering driftwood and shells, watch birds, catch fish, swim, and soak the ceaseless symphony of the surf deep inside your soul.
Katherine Granger, one of the full-time residents, says the shelling on Dog Island may be better than on the world-renowned shell beach farther south on the Gulf Coast at Sanibel Island.
"The best shelling on Dog Island is just after a storm when the waves calm down," she says. "I like to shell at low tide on the bayside flats." Shells she finds include cowries, Murex, Juno's volute, several kinds of scallops, and Mitra sticta, a species best-known from the Indian Ocean.
If they wish, visitors can also become embroiled in a local brouhaha over the 1,800-acre island's future, which promises to be as quirky as its past.
The French discovered Dog Island in 1536, but the Spanish named it. "Nobody knows why they called it Dog Island," says Cliff Shaw, co-manager of The Pelican Inn. "Maybe because of the shape, or because early Spanish cargo ships called their sailors `sea dogs' and put them ashore on the island so they wouldn't jump ship on the mainland."
During the Civil War, Confederate troops stationed on Dog Island burned a lighthouse to keep it out of Federal hands. Its foundations remain - about 125 yard offshore, thanks to shoreline erosion.
From 1864 to 1964, a turpentine firm had a lease to tap Dog Island's pine trees. Scars and rusting caps remain on many of the older trees. During Prohibition, the island was a popular spot for rumrunners.
During World War II, the Army dropped paratroopers training for battle in the Pacific onto Dog Island. "Several planeloads of paratroopers from Fort Benning missed the island on a night drop and fell into the channel," says Joe W. Wheeler, president of Gulf State Bank in Carrabelle, the nearest mainland town. "Fishing nets caught [drowned] paratroopers for weeks. Even now, sometimes at night when the weather is right, you can hear them marching along the beach."
After the war, Tallahassee resident Ivan Munroe bought Dog Island from the government for $15,000. Munroe gave a 25 percent interest to a nephew, Jeff Lewis, part of the family that owned Tallahassee's Lewis State Bank.
"After World War II, locals on the mainland around Carrabelle used to come out to Dog Island to play poker," says Shaw. "In 1951, my father and I spent three days while he played poker in the old supervisor's cabin west of the airstrip. One night just after midnight a poker player had a heart attack and died. The other players set him in a chair on the porch and played till morning."
In 1963, Munroe and Lewis built The Pelican Inn to house prospective buyers. "They tried to develop the island in the 1950s and 1960s as a rich man's paradise that never worked," Shaw says. Instead, the place slowly attracted refugees from civilization - but Dog Islanders paradoxically rank among the world's most gregarious humans, as if striving to soften the solitude that attracted them to this remote place. Today, they'll regale you with tales of a conflict they thought was resolved a decade ago.
Back in 1979, Lewis was courting a Miami developer who wanted to step up Dog Island's development pace by building a bridge to the mainland. To thwart such activity, island property owners contributed about $600,000, which in 1980 helped the Nature Conservancy buy Lewis' Dog Island Corp. and 78 percent of the island for $2 million. The Conservancy didn't want to be in the hotel business, so it persuaded one of its members, Arthur "Skipper" Tonsmeire, owner of a construction company in Fairhope, Ala., to buy and run The Pelican Inn.
In 1983, the Nature Conservancy sold 1,300 unplatted acres to the Cuyahoga Trust, a private charitable trust based in Akron, Ohio. In effect, says airport manager and unofficial island mayor Forrest Granger, control passed to the trust's beneficiary, Dr. Tom Roush of New York City.
The Conservancy retained ownership of about 10 percent of Dog Island, including the land between the hotel and the ferry dock; management rights to the 1,100-acre Jeff Lewis Wilderness Preserve, which the trust actually owns; and the stock in the Dog Island Corp.
Now Roush wants to develop Dog Island, and Granger says the residents are organizing their own Barrier Island Trust in an effort to thwart Roush's plans.
Meanwhile, the island faces another peril. Mother Nature threatens to dissect it. Dog Island has three distinct upland sections, connected by narrow strips of beach and marsh about 30 yards wide. "The sandy trail which runs the length of the island goes underwater along both narrows at high tide," says permanent resident Leonard Clark. "We speculate that the next bad storm will physically separate the western end from the rest of Dog Island."
The east end encompasses The Pelican Inn, the ferry landing at Tysons Harbor, the airstrip, and the highest density of homes. The Nature Conservancy has closed most of the east end to vehicles, but you can hike the network of old turpentine paths and follow the margins of a brackish marsh where herons, ducks and other water birds dwell. Near Ballast Cove, in a region called The Mountains, ancient gnarled sand pines cling to the windblown summits of the highest dunes, rising up to 52 feet above the surf.
A narrow neck of beach and marsh at Ballast Cove separates the east end from the middle section, a forested upland called Cannonball Point. West of Cannonball Point, an even more tenuous strip of sand at Shipping Cove leads to a third patch of upland woods at the island's western tip. Already, says Clark, homeowners at the remote western end of the island seldom visit the eastern end.
Also, the entire island is moving slowly shoreward across St. George Sound, exposing long-buried remnants of a petrified forest on the Gulf side. "Dog Island should reach the mainland in about 600 years," says Shaw.
Services with Dog Island
For lodging information, contact The Pelican Inn, P.O. Box 1351, Fairhope, Ala. 36532, phone 1-800-451-5294.
For ferry service to Dog Island, contact Capt. Raymond Williams, P.O. Box 648, Carrabelle, Fla. 32322, phone 904-697-3434. He operates the Ruby B, a 38-foot boat licensed to carry 26 passengers. The ferry schedule fluctuates with the seasons, and Williams leaves on time. He charges $8.75 per person each way, $60 for a daytime charter, $75 for a nighttime charter.
A third of Dog Island's residents arrive by plane. You can land on the island's 2,700-foot grass airstrip in your own light plane for a $10 fee, or a charter plane in Tallahassee. Contact Coastal Aviation Services, Inc., Tallahassee Municipal Airport, 3240 S.W. Capital Circle, Tallahassee, Fla. 32310, phone 904-575-5924.
Dog Island has no grocery store, so stock up at the Gulfside IGA store on U.S. 98 in Carrabelle. Harry's Georgian Restaurant (Highway 98, Carrabelle Fla. 32322, phone 904-697-3400) prepares a good Greek salad, and fresh fried seafood and 21-piece barrels of fried chicken that you can reheat in The Pelican Inn's oven. The Lighthouse Oyster Bar just east of the IGA (U.S.98, Carrabelle Fla. 32322, phone 904-697-3663) sells smoked amberjack, grouper, mullet and tuna. Both will accept advance orders.
In recent months, security has been a problem for cars parked at the Carrabelle ferry landing by Dog Islanders and their guests. Carrabelle police officer Harry Litton suggests parking down the road in front of the Florida Marine Patrol office, or arranging to park on the IGA lot about a mile away.
For information on the Carrabelle area, contact the Carrabelle Area Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Drawer DD, Carrabelle Fla. 32322, phone 904-697-2585.
by CNB