Cumberland Island is the largest and one of the most natural of Georgia's barrier islands, part of a chain stretching from Cape Cod to beyond Key West. For four thousand years, Timucuan Indians, Spanish soldiers and missionaries, English colonists, plantation owners, generations of the Thomas Carnegie family, and thousands of contemporary travelers have known the island. As part of the National Park System, it offers historic sites, campgrounds, a bathhouse at Seacamp Beach, and level walking paths of less than one mile. The island lies seven miles from the dock at St. Marys, with regularly scheduled boats making the forty-five-minute one-way trip.