Grand Life Spring & Summer '24 FAW ENGLISH - Flipbook - Page 51
PROHIBITION OF ALCOHOL.... The next smuggling boom came from a much different (and
much more sought after) banned good in the US: alcohol. If the residents of West End had
known that the 14th Amendment would bring unheard of prosperity to their village, they
probably would have lobbied for it themselves. Prohibition brought warehouses, distilleries,
bars, supply stores, and inns to West End. The town’s smugglers had the system down to a
science. They’d sail off at night, with ropes dragging huge cylinders of liquor behind them. If
the American Coast Guard pursued, they would simply cut the ropes, wait for the patrol to
leave, and then recover them. Just as it was during the Civil War, however, as soon the US
solved its problem, the economy dove and people started fishing again. It was only with the rise
of tourism that the economy gained more stability.
FREEPORT WAS BORN
In 1955, the second most populated city of The Bahamas was little more than a pine forest.
There were no resorts, no flashing casino lights or jet-skiers zipping through the surf. Grand
Bahama was one of least developed of The Islands of The Bahamas, a place where a few
hundred people made their living off the sea, perhaps daydreaming of the days of Prohibition,
when the island’s economy boomed from smuggling liquor to the United States. No one could
have imagined then that the island would become the quintessential tropical Caribbean
playground.
No one, perhaps, except a man named Wallace Groves. Groves was an American financier
from the state of Virginia who had been on the island since the mid-1940s. He owned a lumber
company at Pine Ridge and was keen to the possibilities of the island as a tourist destination.
Less than a hundred miles away was the United States and its thriving post-war economy.
American vacationers were already streaming into Cuba by the tens of thousands, and
beautiful Grand Bahama, thought Groves, could be an alternative to the overcrowded beaches
and casinos of Havana. And so, in 1955, he approached the Bahamian government with his idea
to build a town that catered to both industry and tourists. Shortly after, a famous document
known as the Hawksbill Creek Agreement was signed, and Freeport was born.
The Agreement granted 50,000 acres of land to Groves’ company, The Grand Bahama Port
Authority Ltd., with an option of adding an additional 50,000. To encourage investment, it also
freed the Port Authority from paying taxes on income, capital gains, real estate and private
property until 1985 – a provision that has since been extended to the year 2054. Soon after the
Agreement was signed, Groves began to enact his vision. He convinced the shipping tycoon
D.K. Ludwig to construct a harbour, and in 1962 he brought in Canadian Louis Chesler to
develop the tourist center of Lucaya. Over 30 years later, the result is a community completely
tailored to the getaway tourist, a premeditated paradise offering almost every kind of vacation
activity imaginable.
