Mainland Abaco

Treasure Cay

As a commercial and charter pilot almost half a century ago, Capt. Leonard Thompson of Marsh Harbour often looked wistfully down on a beautiful beach at a place known on the maps as Sand Banks Cay. It formed a pristine crescent that arched southeast from the Abaco mainland on a wide peninsula. Capt. Thompson dreamed of building a resort there someday, and by the late 1950s, in partnership with U.S. investors, the dream became a reality with a 40-room hotel on 460 acres, which Capt. Thompson renamed Treasure Cay.

Forty years after the first hotel was built here, the resort has become Abaco's largest compound of private homes and resort facilities, covering more than 1,500 acres. The marina has 150 slips and there are accommodations for more than 200 guests, including 95 marina units, a number of villas, condominiums, time shares, and apartments. The resort's 18-hole championship golf course is considered a top course in the Bahamas by leading golf publications, and major sport fishing tournaments draw more than 100 boats and hundreds of participants annually.

Today, there are more than 600 homes at Treasure Cay with a resident population that swells to 1,000 people or more in winter months, although only a small percentage live here year-round. Land sales, home building and population have grown at a steady but moderate pace, while real estate prices have soared. Beachfront lots that sold for $35,000 in the 1970s now sell - when they can be found - for upwards of $600,000. Occasionally, a garden villa can be found for $150,000, while a simple beach villa might sell for $250,000. It costs $250 a square foot and higher to build a home and today beachfront homes sell anywhere from $3 to $6 million

Leisure Lee

Five miles south of Treasure Cay, down the paved highway to Marsh Harbour, is Leisure Lee, a strictly residential community of homes built primarily on ocean access canals or along the shore of the Sea of Abaco.

Since the highway (which was unpaved along here until the 1980s) makes commuting easy, whether you are heading north to Treasure Cay or south to Marsh Harbour, Leisure Lee has become kind of a suburb or bedroom community. Construction on new homes has picked up here in recent years because of its quiet location, reasonably-priced real estate and accessibility to both north and south Abaco.

Bahama Palm Shores

If Leisure Lee is Marsh Harbour's suburban bedroom community to the north, then Leisure Lee serves the same function to the south of that city. Dozens of home-owners commute daily to jobs in "the big city," and come home to tranquillity on the Sea of Abaco. The arrival of electricity in recent times sparked new construction here, although buyers, primarily foreign, started speculating with lots here more than 40 years ago. Just 17 miles down the highway from Marsh Harbour, it is one of the most reasonably-priced communities on mainland Abaco, where hundreds of acres are for sale as well as home resales. Residents love the long, arching beach with its miles of empty sand, the air of serenity and the tropical touches lent to the community by hundreds of coconut palms.

Casuarina Point

Located just 14 miles south of Marsh Harbour and three miles north of Leisure Lee, Casuarina was originally built as a company residential community for Owens Illinois, a lumber company exporting Abaco pine. It evolved into a government-subsidized subdivision after the lumber company ceased operations, but in the past 15 years or so Casuarina has developed as a suburb in its own right with new houses and renovated older ones.

Across the sound from Casuarina is the settlement of Cherokee Sound, yet another loyalist enclave which somehow endured for more than 150 years as an isolated fishing and boat-building community. Property in and around Cherokee has caught on with folks wanting to relocate to a real town which retains traditional neighborly standards while embracing modern conveniences. Cherokee's simplicity is contrasted dramatically with the plush and exclusive environment of The Abaco Club, a gated $160 million golf and beach community which is only five miles up the road on exquisite Winding Bay. Here oceanfront lots go for millions of dollars and a required $75,000 club membership buys all privileges, including golf on a spectacular Scottish links style course with mind-boggling views of the Atlantic.

South of here, an empty and undeveloped Atlantic coastline beckons beachcombers - and new developers. Some have subdivided lots at Old Kerrs, Schooner Bay and Long Beach near the settlement of Crossing Rock. Sandy Point, a village 60 miles south of Marsh Harbour at Abaco's southern tip, has long been a haven for fishing enthusiasts. The town's friendly residents are known as some of Abaco's best farmers, fishermen and seafarers. Property is much less expensive than many other areas because of its less-than-prime location, but the road is paved and it's only a matter of time.