Cat Island

Cat Island contains the highest point in the entire Bahamian archipelago—Mount Alvernia at 207 feet—yet remains one of the least developed islands economically. This inverts the usual correlation between geographic prominence and economic importance. The mountain itself is topped by The Hermitage, a miniature monastery hand-built in 1939 by Father Jerome, a Catholic priest who chose isolation over congregation. The symbolism is difficult to miss: Cat Island's peak is marked not by resort development or infrastructure but by a monument to solitude.

The island produces people far more successfully than it retains them. Sidney Poitier, the first Black actor to win an Academy Award, grew up in Arthur's Town before leaving for Nassau and eventually Hollywood. Philip Davis, current Prime Minister of the Bahamas, also comes from Cat Island. The pattern repeats across generations: the island's 1,522 residents (2010 census) represent a population that has been declining for decades as young people leave for Nassau or abroad. Cat Island exports human capital without capturing the returns.

What remains is a highly specialized niche economy. The island harvests cascarilla bark (Croton eluteria) for export to Italy, where it becomes a key ingredient in Campari and pharmaceutical products. This is endemic specialization taken to an extreme—Cat Island supplies a specific aromatic bark for a specific Italian bitter liquor. The crop requires minimal infrastructure, tolerates poor soil, and generates income without attracting the industrial agriculture that would transform the island. Cascarilla is the perfect crop for a place that wants to stay small.

Tourism exists but deliberately avoids scale. No large resorts, no cruise ports, no high-rises—only boutique properties and locally owned lodges serving visitors who specifically seek underdevelopment. The 2024-2025 infrastructure upgrades—a new airport terminal in Arthur's Town, runway resurfacing, two desalination plants—represent the minimum investment required to prevent complete economic collapse rather than a foundation for growth. Combined GDP for Cat Island, Rum Cay, and San Salvador totaled $58 million in 2024, up 16% from the prior year but still a fraction of what Bimini or Eleuthera generate.

Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution settled Cat Island in 1783, establishing cotton plantations that briefly made the island wealthy. The plantations failed when the soil depleted and slavery ended. What replaced them was slash-and-burn subsistence farming and the cascarilla trade—economic activities that sustain a small population without attracting outside capital. This is path dependence of a particular kind: early failure locked in low-intensity land use, which preserved the tranquility that now defines the island's tourism brand.

By 2026, Cat Island faces a question about whether its current trajectory is sustainable or terminal. The population continues aging as youth leave. The cascarilla market remains small and specialized. Tourism attracts visitors who explicitly don't want development, creating a constituency against growth. The island has found a stable low-energy state—economically peripheral but ecologically preserved, producing famous individuals who leave and niche crops for Italian liquor. Whether this represents successful adaptation or slow extinction depends on whether you measure success by GDP or by the survival of tranquility as an economic resource in an increasingly developed archipelago.