Before they became National Wildlife Refuges, many of today's treasured public shorelands were privately owned sportsmen's clubs. Between the Civil War and the Great Depression, hundreds of these clubs, built by wealthy industrialists and staffed by Southern locals, dotted the American coastline.
In this intimate recounting, regional historians, as well as Eastern Shore residents with deep family connections to these places, take us on a haunting journey through evocative ruins to bring the clubs’ heyday to vivid life.
But the shifting sands of these dynamic islands are no place to build a permanent structure, and Spione’s film details how powerful storms and economic stress brought the era of the clubs to a close.