Length: .8 mile, one-way
Time: 30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
The Nightingale Trail is the most beautiful trail within Cumberland Island National Seashore. Its live oak and palmetto forest is enchanting, and while this is the same scenery as the walk to Sea Camp Campground, I don’t really consider that a trail. If you are walking between Sea Camp and Dungeness and do not mind a detour, you can’t go wrong by hiking this trail.
The trail forms a C-shape, with one end on Grand Avenue about a quarter mile north of the Dungeness area and the other on Coleman Road east of Grand Avenue. It is a typical nature trail with numbered posts along the way that correspond to written descriptions on a trail brochure. The focus is on the vegetation, and some of it is quite interesting. For example, not all of the trees that I call “live oaks” are live oaks. Some are actually water oaks, which are similar but have a different leaf.
The Nightingale Trail is meant to be hiked starting from Coleman Road, as the posts begin at #1 and proceed to #15 by the time you get to Grand Avenue. However, the information does not build upon itself, so it makes no real difference where you start. There is a box with a trail brochure at either end, assuming the Rangers keep them stocked. When I hiked the trail, the Coleman Road box was empty, but there were some brochures at the Grand Avenue trailhead. Unless you have a good reason to keep the brochure, place it back in the box when you finish the hike. Keep a careful eye out for the posts because some are nestled in the bushes and are hard to spot.
If starting on Grand Avenue as I did, you will be hiking east towards the Atlantic coast. Right when the trail turns south you will see that people have blazed a path to the beach. However, this is not an official beach entry point, and a sign directs you to stay on the Nightingale Trail. A limb across the entrance reinforces the idea of keeping off the beach path, though the abundance of footprints through the sand indicates that not everyone gets the idea.
If you end at Coleman Road and want to see the Dungeness Mansion ruins, take a right and head back to Grand Avenue, then take a left to the mansion. If you take a left on Coleman you will come to the Service Village area, which is where all work-related buildings from the Carnegie era are located. For a virtual walking tour of the entire historical district, see the Dungeness Area Tour web page here on National Park Planner.
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Last updated on April 13, 2022