Crooked Island, Acklins, Long Cay, and Castle Island form a small group of islands wrapped around a 500-square-mile shallow lagoon called the Bight of Acklins, in the southeastern Bahamas. The combined permanent population of the group is under 1,000 people. These are among the least visited islands in the Bahamas and among the least developed. The main settlement on Crooked Island is Colonel Hill. The main settlement on Acklins is Spring Point.
- Nearest airports: Colonel Hill Airport, Crooked Island (CRI / MYCI), Spring Point Airport, Acklins (AXP / MYAP)
- Climate: Tropical. Warm and dry December to April, hot and wet June to October.
Why people visit Crooked Island and Acklins
Bonefishing is the primary draw. The Bight of Acklins and the mangrove waterways of Crooked Island hold some of the best bonefish flats in the Bahamas. The combination of shallow water, clear visibility, and almost no fishing pressure makes these islands a destination for serious fly fishers. Very few guides operate here, which keeps access limited and the fishing undisturbed.
Diving and snorkeling off both islands involve healthy reefs with little boat traffic. The wall off Crooked Island drops sharply into deep water. The Columbus landing site near the northwest tip of Crooked Island, where British fortifications also stand, draws visitors interested in the early European exploration of the Bahamas.
Acklins is one of only two islands in the Bahamas where cascarilla bark grows. The same bitter herb exported from Cat Island to Italy as a flavoring in Campari grows wild here and has been used in local bush medicine for generations.
What made Crooked Island and Acklins
The Lucayan Taíno lived here before Columbus. They called Crooked Island Jumento, meaning upper land of the middle distance, and Acklins Yabaque, meaning large western land. Columbus named Crooked Island Isabella on his 1492 voyage and is believed to have landed near its northwest tip. Some historians identify it as the fourth island Columbus visited after San Salvador. Columbus named Long Cay, the small island to the northwest of the Bight, Fortune Island.
American Loyalists arrived in the late 1780s and established more than 40 cotton plantations across the islands, employing over 1,000 enslaved Africans. The soil was poor and the cotton economy failed within a generation of abolition in 1834. The islands never recovered economically in the way that Nassau or even Freeport did. What remained was a small fishing and farming population and the ruins of the plantation era, still visible in the overgrown interior of both islands.
The building at Pitts Town on Crooked Island is believed to be the site of the first post office in the Bahamas.
What you find
Crooked Island is the larger of the two main islands, running roughly east to west. The interior holds plantation ruins, wild herbs, and limestone caves. The northwest tip has the British fortifications and the Columbus landing marker. The settlement of French Wells sits at the entrance to a tidal creek called Turtle Sound that winds inland through mangroves, varying in depth and used by turtles, birds, and marine life.
Acklins sits to the southeast across the Bight. One of the largest Lucayan settlements ever found in the Bahamas has been excavated at Pompey Bay Beach, just south of Spring Point. Plana Cays, a protected reserve northeast of Spring Point, is home to endangered great iguanas and the Bahamian hutia, a small rodent and the only native land mammal of the Bahamas. Samana Cay, also northeast of Acklins, is one of the competing candidates for Columbus's first landfall in 1492 and has ten documented Lucayan archaeological sites.
Long Cay, the smallest of the inhabited islands, was once a trading post and is now almost empty. Castle Island, the southernmost in the group, is uninhabited.
