Peering Into Pin Point - A Visit to the Pin Point Heritage Museum in Savannah Georgia
Peering Into Pin Point - A Visit to the Pin Point Heritage Museum in Savannah, Georgia
By: a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures
Dear Henry,
Last year, while wandering through Savannah, I stumbled across one of the most meaningful heritage sites I’ve ever visited: the Pin Point Heritage Museum. Tucked away along the Moon River, Pin Point is one of the last remaining Gullah Geechee communities in the United States, and the birthplace of Clarence Thomas.
At first glance, it feels unassuming. But Pin Point carries the weight of history in its soil, its water, and its voices.
The story of Pin Point is inseparable from the A.S. Varn & Son Oyster and Crab Factory, built in 1929. For decades, it was the economic heart of the community, employing nearly everyone who lived there at one time or another and exporting close to 1,500 pounds of crab meat each day. The factory’s fortunes began to decline in 1965, when construction of the Diamond Causeway altered tidal flows and disrupted the oyster beds. In 1985, the factory finally closed its doors.
For years, the site sat quiet, until 2010, when Dallas-based Crow Holdings purchased the land and undertook a careful restoration, transforming the abandoned factory into a living heritage museum.
Visiting Pin Point became one of the highlights of my Savannah trip, and it’s a place I recommend without hesitation.
My guide, Gail, grew up in Pin Point, and the tour felt less like a formal presentation and more like being welcomed into someone’s memory. We began with an introduction to the Gullah Geechee people, their customs, music, and deep ties to the water, before moving through the factory itself. Gail explained the labor-intensive process of shucking oysters and shelling crabs, work that demanded speed, precision, and endurance.
The oyster house was built so low and so close to the shoreline that, during high tide, water would flow directly into the building. The workers didn’t stop. They simply pulled on boots and kept going. I remember shivering at the thought of standing in cold tidal water for hours, hands raw from salt and shells, because stopping meant not getting paid.
Gail also spoke about Geechee, the language of the Gullah people. Though rooted in English, it carries words, rhythms, and structures from West and Central Africa. It developed not only as a means of communication but as a form of protection, a way to share information among community members without revealing it to Euro-American plantation owners. Like a language of metaphor and parable, almost Darmok-like in its construction, it remains largely impenetrable to outsiders. Paired with the regional accent, you might catch a word or two, but never the whole meaning. And the language is still alive today.
One of my favorite moments came when I learned that the Moon River, the same waterway celebrated in the song by Johnny Mercer, flows right past Pin Point. For the community, this river wasn’t just poetic inspiration; it was sacred space. It was where baptisms took place, where faith and water met.
At the end of the tour, I watched the short film Take Me to the Water: The Story of Pin Point. It wove together history with interviews from former factory workers, grounding the buildings in human voices. It transformed the space from a preserved architectural space into a lived experience.
Before leaving, I stopped in the gift shop and bought a print of Shucking Oysters by Jonathan Green, a Gullah artist from a nearby community. It felt right to carry something tangible from the story with me.
Afterward, in honor of Pin Point, I went in search of crab cakes. Unfortunately, they didn’t follow Gail’s recipe. She was very clear: Ritz crackers, not saltines. There is a difference.
What struck me most, though, was learning more about the deeper history of the Gullah people. They are an American ethno-cultural group descended from enslaved Africans brought to the coastal rice plantations of South Carolina and Georgia. These individuals were not taken at random. Slave traders deliberately targeted people from West and Central Africa’s rice-growing regions, explicitly for their agricultural expertise.
That knowledge, that the system was that intentional, unsettled me. I had wanted to believe the violence was chaotic or accidental. It wasn’t.
Yet out of that brutality emerged a community. Shared language. Shared memory. After the Civil War and a series of devastating hurricanes in the 1890s, the Gullah people left the rice plantations and reorganized along the coast, turning to seafood harvesting. One congregation, the “Hinder Me Not” community, organized around church rather than bloodlines, which makes heartbreaking sense, purchased land on Ossabaw Island. That land became Pin Point.
Standing there, surrounded by water and stories, I felt the weight of endurance. Pin Point is not just a preserved place. It is evidence of survival, adaptation, and cultural continuity against all odds.
Some roads don’t just lead somewhere.
They remember.
xoxo a.d. elliott
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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.
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