Start from 26 curated places around St. Marys, GA, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Locals Dockside
Waterfront seafood and steak house right on the St. Marys River dock, with an open deck that puts you five feet above the water. The shrimp and grits draw the most repeat business, and the blackened shrimp is genuinely good—not just dressed-up frozen product. Dog-friendly patio makes it a natural stop after a Cumberland Island ferry return.
St Marys Seafood & More
A no-frills seafood tavern on Osborne Road that locals have been coming to for years—the kind of place with laminated menus and shrimp you can actually taste. The shrimp corn chowder is the standout, a thick, creamy bowl with real corn and local shrimp that shows up in nearly every positive review. Portions run large and prices run honest.
Trails & outdoors
Dungeness Loop Trail
A 4.2-mile loop on Cumberland Island that combines the island's Atlantic beach, its maritime forest interior, and the Dungeness historic area in a single circuit. This is the go-to for first-time visitors who want to see everything the south end offers without committing to the longer backcountry trails. The mix of open beach, tangled live oak canopy, and dramatic ruins is what makes it work as a loop rather than an out-and-back.
Crooked River State Park Boardwalk Loop
A 3.3-mile easy loop through the salt marsh and pine forest of Crooked River State Park, with a wooden boardwalk section that crosses directly over the tidal marsh. The birding is consistent—wood storks, painted buntings, ospreys, and bald eagles all show up along this stretch. Flat, accessible, and well-positioned for a morning walk before or after a Cumberland Island ferry day.
Things to do
Cumberland Island Ferry
The 45-minute passenger ferry crossing from St. Marys to Cumberland Island is the only public access to one of the East Coast's most intact barrier island wildernesses. The boat ride itself—crossing the Intracoastal Waterway with views of the Georgia marsh—is worth doing for the scenery alone. Book the first departure to maximize island time, and have a plan for what you want to see when you land.
Crooked River State Park
A 500-acre coastal Georgia state park on the Intracoastal Waterway with hiking trails through salt marsh and coastal forest, kayak and canoe launch access to the Crooked River, and campsites and cottages set among Spanish moss-draped oaks. It's the base camp option for the St. Marys area—close enough to the Cumberland Island ferry to structure a multi-day trip around.
Landmarks & sights
Cumberland Island National Seashore
Georgia's largest barrier island, accessible only by ferry from downtown St. Marys—18 miles of undeveloped beach, a maritime forest draped in Spanish moss, and feral horses that roam the ruins of a Carnegie-era mansion with no particular concern for visitors. The combination of Gilded Age decay and untouched coastline is unlike anything on the developed Georgia coast. A full day is the minimum to do it justice.
Dungeness Ruins
The four-story shell of the Carnegie family's winter mansion, standing open to the sky in a clearing where horses graze through the rubble. The site layers centuries of history—a Timucuan shell mound beneath a Revolutionary War tabby house beneath an 1880s Gilded Age estate. There's a free ranger-led walking tour most mornings that unlocks context the ruins don't provide on their own.