Freeport City History

You can date the modern history of Grand Bahama Island, largely known as Freeport and Port Lucaya (since those communities are the largest population centers) to around 1955. Of course, the history of the scenic tropical cay goes much further back, but their modern history does not. Start, though, with the very, very distant past.

That past can be traced back to a tribe called the Siboneys, an Indian people who, like most islanders, lived off fishing, shelling and other sea-related products. That past goes back some millenniums, according to some geological evidence. But the Siboneys didn't prosper for various reasons. Their presence was replaced by the Lucayans, for whom the second-most popular population center is named, Port Lucaya. The largest population area is Freeport, on the other end of the island, a commercial hub not only for tourism but for shipping and commerce, as well.

When Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492, the citizenry numbered some 40,000, not only on Grand Bahama but also throughout the entire Bahamas chain. Of those, some 4,000 to 5,000 were on Grand Bahama proper, according to historians.

Like on the other Bahamas islands, though, Grand Bahama residents were drafted for slavery by the Spanish government, which said it owned the island after Columbus landed. That led to a virtual depopulation of the island, as residents were taken to Europe for servitude.

That was the case until another government laid claim to the islands, the English crown. This is when Settler Charles II of England created what was called the town of Nassau, then known as Charles Town, in 1695. The island became a colony of England in 1718, when the English monarchy named Woodes Rogers as the Royal Governor.

That was the beginning of the height of piracy—familiar names of the times are Blackbeard, Henry Morgan and Captain Kid. And piracy was indeed the primary industry during that period, along with slavery.

However, Britain ended its own slave trade in the 1800s, and the Bahamas took on the character of farmers and fishermen. And that was, in fact, the character of Grand Bahama for the next 200 years or so. It was a life so simple.

But it also became a life somewhat prosperous, as Grand Bahama became a booze-smugglers paradise when the U.S. Congress enacted Prohibition in 1919. Born was a lively and profitable liquor bootlegging industry. But Prohibition was deemed a failure, largely due to the bootlegging. Prohibition came to an end in 1933.

But Grand Bahama's watershed was in 1955, when Virginia businessman Wallace Groves realized the potential of these islands as a port of entry to the U.S. and a tourist destination. That would involve building a city where only palm trees, sand and surf existed. And Groves did exactly that.

On Aug. 5, 1955, Groves signed an accord with the British government that essentially gave him Grand Bahama, at least in the financial sense. He was given permission to build from scratch an infrastructure—airports, ports, roads, utilities. In return, the newfound Grand Bahama Port Authority, for which he served as president, was given permission to allow tax-free income and other financial concessions—setting the stage for what are now considered offshore corporations. Companies seeking to hide their assets—and the assets of the companies' principles utilize those, for the most part.

But the accord, called the Hawksbill Creek Agreement, also set the stage for developing Grand Bahama as the tourist destination we know today—the constant cruise ships from South Florida, the duty free shopping and fine dining, the straw markets, the hair-braiding. Without it, Grand Bahama would likely be just another stop-over cay, an island where only those whose souls are Caribbean in the first place. Those who realize that once they smell the salt air, there is no going back to ties and slacks and twice-a-month haircuts to please the corporate shirts.

Groves, it turned out, was a visionary. Such a visionary, in fact, that the island's population was just 9,000 or so in 1963. Four years later, that number would grow four-fold, because he saw the tourism, and recognized the fact that to serve tourists' needs, the tourism industry needed workers to serve as bellhops, servers and the like. Groves's infrastructure allowed development of casinos, resorts and other, for lack of a better word, amenities, to serve the growing number of visitors.

The tourist destination did then, and still does, employ thousands of people in sectors ranging from bars to hotels to water sports businesses. It was, simply, the island paradise finally realizing that its assets—beautiful flora and fauna, crystal beaches, gin-clear water, oh-so-close reefs—were coveted by people who had enough of the snow and rain from other inclement locales. And the fact that Grand Bahama is fewer than 100 miles from the U.S. didn't hurt.

Now, Grand Bahama is considered a playground. Right or wrong, that is the fact. From family resorts to adult-only communities, this 96-mile-long chain of paradise is on the top of the list of destinations for those seeking tropical respite. Freeport and Port Lucaya, two main Grand Bahama Island destinations, provide that. Thank Wallace Groves.