A Little History
The earliest inhabitants of these islands were Lucayan Indians, who settled in the Bahamas archipelago some 800 years before Columbus arrived in the New World. Some historians believe that Grand Turk was the site of Columbus's first landfall -- and experts have established that the explorer was indeed greeted on his arrival by Lucayan Indians -- but no hard evidence exists to support this theory either way. The Lucayans' idyllic existence came to an end when Spanish explorers arrived, enslaving the natives and exposing them to diseases. In a generation, the Lucayan population was wiped out. Habitation was spotty after that, with the islands passing through Spanish, French, and British control and industries coming and going -- from salt-raking, which drew Bermudans -- and the British crown -- in the late 17th century, to cotton, which brought Loyalists fleeing the States after the American Revolution. The cotton industry was eventually done in by storms and pests, and by the early 19th century, the main inhabitants left on the islands were the slaves that had been brought in to work the plantations. The salt industry -- labor-intensive work that broke the backs of many a worker in the tropical heat -- lasted until the 1960s, around the time a small airstrip was built on Provo and a nascent tourist industry began to stir. But it wasn't until 1984, when the development of Club Med led to the construction of a larger airport, that commercial tourism started to take root on the Turks & Caicos Islands.
For those who knew and loved the TCI in slower times and who may be concerned that the islands are in danger of being overdeveloped (or even ruinously developed), it's comforting to know that of the 40 islands that comprise the TCI, only eight are inhabited. Even the most populous beach, Provo's Grace Bay, has long, dreamy stretches where you're the only soul on the soft sand. And except for a couple of scary concrete behemoths rising up out of the beach on Grace Bay (when did the oceanfront height limits jump from 5 stories to 10?), the focus has been on "sustainable development" and low-impact, high-end properties -- boutique resorts with ecologically sensitive bones. Let's hope this vision holds through the fizzy boom times. In the meantime, TCI offers a fresh and exciting experience for travelers in search of a pristine (and accessible) island paradise.
Take Home a Potcake . . . or Two
The homeless dogs you see roaming the streets of many Caribbean countries generally stay that way: homeless and constantly foraging for food and shelter. The Turks & Caicos Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (TCSPCA) was founded in 2000 to better address the plight of these homeless dogs, here called "potcakes" -- the name comes from the food once fed to stray dogs, the caked remains of the bottom of cooking pots. Potcakes may be living in the wild, but they're smart, unflappable, incredibly adaptable, and very loving. Potcakes look like the ultimate mutts, with comically floppy ears and generally tan or black markings, and many a visitor has fallen in love during a stay in the TCI. Along with lobbying the government to adopt animal protection laws and create an animal control unit, the TCSPCA is working to find homes for these dogs -- but there are only so many homes on TCI and so many more potcakes. As a result, the TCSPCA is promoting "off-island adoptions," making it easy for visitors to actually carry home a potcake puppy (the TCI has no pet quarantine periods coming in or going out of the country). Every puppy comes with shots and medical certificates and can be carried in the passenger cabins of most airplanes. For more information, contact Susan Blehr, the program director of the TCSPCA, at tel. 649/231-3052, or the island charity set up to improve the lives of TCI potcakes, the Potcake Foundation (http://potcakefoundation.com).
Raking & Making Salt
The large, shallow, stone-bordered ponds in the middle of Grand Turk are not just nesting sites for flamingos and other brilliant birds: They are salinas, abandoned artifacts of the salt industry, which ruled the Grand Turk and Salt Cay economies for 300 years. The salt industry began with seasonal salt-rakers coming to the TCI from Bermuda in the late 1600s and lasted until commercial exploitation of the salinas ended in the 1960s. Grand Turk and Salt Cay, the original salt-producing islands, have several natural, shallow, inland depressions (salinas) that filled with salt water directly from the sea or percolated up from underlying rock. Bermudians improved the natural salinas, making them into rock-bordered salt pans or ponds. Salt was made by letting seawater into the salinas through sluice gates located at the beach. Water was concentrated by evaporation in one pond, then concentrated again in a second. The slushy brine was then let into smaller drying pans, where the salt crystallized. The cycle took about 90 days from start to finish, but "crops" for each set of pans were spaced by the individual stages into 20- to 30-day periods. Workers raked the crystallized salt into piles and shoveled it into wheelbarrows. Raking salt under the midday sun was an incredibly labor-intensive business, and many who worked the salt (including a number of slaves) were felled by the brutal conditions.
Who used all this salt? From the time of the first European settlements in North America to the middle of the 1800s, salt was a critical food-preservation item. The United States was dependent upon salt imports to some degree until almost the end of the 19th century. The relative importance of the Turks Islands, however, dwindled as the demand for salt expanded. Dwarfed by the demand and other producers and unable to expand pond acreage, mechanize loading, or achieve economies of scale, the salt industry in the Turks Islands finally collapsed in the 1960s after 300 years of production.
-- Courtesy of the Turks & Caicos National Museum
