"Darien is the second oldest settled municipality in Georgiawith a history and culture as diverse as any in the state. Its origins lay in its founding by Highland Scots, and that Scottish legacy has transcended almost three centuries. Darien's history is unique in that it experienced a series of devastating economic downturns in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, yet made remarkable recoveries each time to become an even more prosperous community. In addition, Darien suffered the travails of war--it was burned to the ground by federal forces in 1863, yet rebuilt and prospered economically for the next forty years as one of the leading exporters of raw timber and processed lumber in the United States, exemplifying a new industrial economy that succeeded its former antebellum agricultural economy, and reflecting the changing dynamics of a "new South" in the postbellum era."--Page 4 of cover

The book explores both the need and the possibilities for conservation of the river and the surrounding forests and wetlands.

Between 1735 and 1748 hundreds of young men and their families emigrated from the Scottish Highlands to the Georgia coast to settle and protect the new British colony. These men were recruited by the trustees of the colony and military governor James Oglethorpe, who wanted settlers who were accustomed to hardship, militant in nature, and willing to become frontier farmer-soldiers. In this respect, the Highlanders fit the bill perfectly through training and tradition. By focusing on the Scots themselves, Anthony W. Parker explains what factors motivated the Highlanders to leave their native glens of Scotland for the pine barrens of Georgia and attempts to account for the reasons their cultural distinctiveness and "old world" experience aptly prepared them to play a vital role in the survival of Georgia in this early and precarious moment in its history.

From 1870 to 1920, McIntosh County, Georgia, was one of the most energetic communities on the southern coast. Its county seat, Darien, never had a population of more than 2,000 residents; yet, little Darien was, for a considerable time, the leading exporter of yellow pitch pine timber on the Atlantic Coast. Burned to ashes during the Civil War, Darien rose up and, with its timber booms and sawmills, took its place among the leading towns of the New South of the late nineteenth century. In this unique photographic retrospective of Darien and McIntosh County, over 200 images evoke generations past of dynamic, hard-working people. Pictured within these pages are timber barons, sawmill workers, railroad builders, and shrimp fishermen. They are depicted among views of the buildings and structures associated with an era that was the most active in the recorded history of the community, which dates back to the earliest days of the Georgia colony in 1736.