Tuesday the 26th. Things I've
learned about Grand Bahama Island... The first settlers, the Siboney Indians,
lived on the island as long as 7000 years ago, living off conch and fish.
They disappeared around the time the Lucayans made their way to the island by
way of the Caribbean from South America. Good old Christopher Columbus and
his fellow Spaniards quickly wiped out the 4,000 Lucayan inhabitants in 1492 through
enslavement, murder, and the introduction of new diseases. The island, named
Gran Bahamar (meaning great shallows) by the Spanish, was almost
completely abandoned after ships started avoiding it because of the surrounding
shallow reef. Great Britain claimed the Islands of The Bahamas in 1670.
A period of piracy kept the island active for a while, but by 1720 the British
had that under control and things were again left inactive until the American
Civil War two hundred years later. The island was then used as a port to smuggle
goods through the Union blockades to the southern states only 55 miles away.
Prior to the Civil War less than 400 people lived on the island.
Prohibition provided the next
smuggling boom and it wasn't until the 1950s when
an American financier created the town of Freeport that tourism became the
driving force behind the island's economy. By the late 1990s tourism had steadily declined due to aging hotels and lack of investment.
However in 2000, Hutchison Whampoa, the Chinese company that has operational
control of the Panama Canal and built the largest container port in the world at
Freeport, completed construction of The Westin and Sheraton at Our Lucaya (where
we stayed). The resort along with the attached casino has re-energized the
local economy and made Grand Bahama Island the second most visited island in the
Bahamas. Other interesting notes: the Bahamas are in the
Atlantic, not the Caribbean. The Islands of The Bahamas have only been
emancipated from British rule since 1973. Only foreigners are allowed to
gamble in the casinos.
