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| Church interior at Eight Mile Rock |
By Seeta Terry Shaw Roath
Freetown was named for having the first freed slaves in the British Empire in 1834. Before 1955, a footpath from Old Freetown in the east was the primary thoroughfare for traveling to the settlements in the west at Eight Mile Rock. As Freeport was developed, a modern highway was constructed and the old road was abandoned and left to nature. Eventually, nature did such a good job of reclaiming it that a stretch of the road near Freetown has become one of the island’s chief nature walks.
Along the easy, five-mile trek are over 30 species of plants, 18 kinds of birds, 7 species of butterflies, and what remains of “The Hermitage,” the oldest intact building on Grand Bahama, dating back to 1901. It was first a Baptist Church and later served as a hermitage for a Trappist monk.
Eight Mile Rock obtained its name from the eight miles of solid rock found along its shore line. The “town” is actually a string of settlements, each of which takes the name of the family who settled and still inhabits the land. Jones Town, Martin Town, Pinedale, Hanna Hill, Bassett Hill, Wildgoose and Hepburn Town are a few of the sub-settlements. Their respective families are chiefly descendants of freed slaves who now own the land because their families have inhabited it since the mid-nineteenth century.
The furthest settlement is called Williams Town. This town was founded by Joseph Williams, a freed slave, and some of his descendants still live there on what is called “generation land,” because it was settled by one family and ownership of the land was passed on equally, generation to generation, to all members of the family. This is customary in most small settlements on the island. The town has a boiling hole and an old cemetery.
Smith’s Point is named after the Scotsman, Michael Smith, who served in the early 1800s as Commissioner of the island. Instead of money as payment, he was given 400 acres of land, part of which one of his sons sold to the Grand Bahama Development Company. It is the venue for what has become a Wednesday night tradition on the island - the Fish Fry.
West End is the island’s oldest city and is located on the western tip of the island. This picturesque fishing village is probably best known for its history as a liquor smuggling town during United States Prohibition. Today, fishermen can be seen pulling in their catches in much the same way as generations before them. Visitors can rent a boat and go bone-fishing, considered by experts to be one of the toughest challenges in sport fishing.
A recent archaeological dig along the eroding beach front of Deadman’s Reef unearthed many artifacts belonging to the Lucayan Indians — hearths, animal bones, pottery pieces, and shell beads. This Lucayan archaeological site has been dated at around 1200-1300 AD.
When Christopher Columbus sighted San Salvador on his first crossing in 1492, there were an estimated 40,000 Lucayans living in the Bahamas, with a population of about 4,000 or more on Grand Bahama Island.
Grand Bahama Island was largely left alone by the outside world up until the mid-nineteenth century. Records from 1836 show that the population of West End was only about 370. In 1861, however, the population of the town virtually doubled overnight.
At the outbreak of the American Civil War, the Confederate States of America, a mere 55 miles away, immediately fell under a strict Union blockade and embargo. Getting goods such as sugar, cotton, and weapons in and out of the Confederacy was essential to the war effort, and smugglers operating out of West End were able to command hefty prices from the South. As soon as the war ended, however, so did the boom, but the short burst of prosperity set an important precedent: from then on, the history of Grand Bahama Island was intimately tied to that of the United States. |
