Off the coast of Georgia sits Sapelo Island — and in its village of Hog Hammock lives one of the last intact Gullah Geechee communities in America. It is a place where the language, food, faith, and family traditions of West Africa have survived for more than two centuries. Here is what you need to know before you go.
Sapelo is a barrier island in McIntosh County, Georgia, accessible only by ferry from the mainland town of Meridian. Much of the island is protected state land, but roughly 500 acres at the south end make up Hog Hammock, the unincorporated community where Gullah Geechee descendants live. The island's history stretches from the Spanish mission era to the plantations where enslaved West Africans cultivated rice.
Hog Hammock's residents trace their ancestry to the enslaved people who worked the Sapelo Island plantations. Over generations, the community retained the Gullah Geechee language, its ring-shout religious traditions, its one-pot foodways, and its network of kinship — much of it rooted in the same West African cultures that shaped the Carolina Sea Islands.
Hog Hammock's history is also a story of survival against land loss. Over the past decades, rising property taxes, speculation, and out-migration have threatened the community. Today, cultural organizations and descendants work to keep the village intact and the heritage alive.
GULLAH GEECHEE BIZ