Balfour Town
Salt Cay
Balfour Town is a settlement on Salt Cay, and one of the oldest in the Turks and Caicos. The iconic Harriott White House at Dunscom Point and many homes and accommodations are located in the district. Although outside of the settlement, the island's only port of Deane's Dock and the Salt Cay Airport are also nearby in North District.
Deane's Dock, the cargo and passenger harbor for Salt Cay, is the busiest section and is what would be considered the “center” of town.
North District is directly adjacent to the northeast of Balfour Town, and South District is located across Town Salina to the south.
Sights and Attractions
Although tourism does provide the main income to the local economy, the town lacks the commercial atmosphere of so many other tropical vacation destinations. This creates the main draw—a Caribbean island exhibiting the old way of life.
Not as extensive as several of the other Salt Cay beaches, Balfour Town Beach does offer a beautiful patch of sheltered sand. Snorkeling in the area is decent as well.
Donkeys, out of work since the end of the salt days, still roam freely. Cut block and stuccoed limestone buildings, built in a British Bermudian colonial architecture, line the streets.
A small hill to the north of town, Little Bluff Lookout, is a great place to enjoy the view.
The gates and inlets of the salinas are also interesting to explore. Salt production ended by the 1960s, but much of the infrastructure still remains.
Vying with the Grand Turk Lighthouse for the position of most-recognizable structure in the country, the centuries-old Harriott White House, the previous home and headquarters of a wealthy salt family, still stands.
History
Balfour Town was founded by Bermudian salt rakers sometime in the mid to late 1600s. Originally only seasonally inhabited, as demand for salt in the budding American colonies increased, so did production on Salt Cay and the necessary infrastructure, residences, and population.
A quiet place today, Balfour Town in the past was a bustling place and quite important to the fledgling Turks and Caicos economy of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Hurricane Damage
Salt Cay hasn’t fared as well as some of the other islands in the Turks and Caicos when it comes to major storms.
Historically, hurricanes have hit the island every few years, with a major hurricane ravaging Salt Cay every forty to fifty years. When the salt industry was in operation, a storm would cause tremendous loss to the freshly gathered salt stocks. Such an example is the 1866 storm, where one and a quarter million bushels (approximately 35,000 tons) of hand-gathered salt in the country was washed away and nearly every home on the island was crushed.
Hurricane Ike in 2008 was another recent strike, destroying the breakwater at Deane’s Dock and the island’s only desalination plant, along with tearing off the roofs of many residences.
Hurricanes Irma and Maria again thrashed the island in 2017, causing extensive damage and knocking out power for weeks.