Walker's Cay takes its name from Thomas Walker, a British judge dispatched to the northern Bahamas in the early 1700s to deal with the pirates who used the scattered cays as hideouts and staging grounds. What Walker accomplished during his tenure is lost to the gaps in colonial records, but his name stuck to this particular island long after his death in 1721. For the next two centuries, nobody lived here. The reason was fundamental: Walker's Cay had no natural fresh water. Without a spring or aquifer, the island could not sustain permanent habitation, and so it remained a landmark for passing sailors rather than a home for anyone. The cay sits on the edge of the Little Bahama Bank, where shallow turquoise water averaging ten feet deep gives way abruptly on the north side to the deep blue of the open Atlantic - a dramatic underwater cliff that would eventually make this spot irresistible to fishermen.

Development came in 1935, when a Palm Beach businessman named Buzz Shonnard leased the island from the Bahamian government and built a small hotel. A 75-slip marina followed, along with Walker's Cay Airport - a 2,500-foot runway suitable for light aircraft. The island attracted anglers who came for the deep-water fishing just off the northern edge, where the bank drops into blue marlin territory. During World War II, the U.S. Navy requisitioned the cay as an advanced base for maritime patrol seaplanes from Scouting Squadron 39, with the seaplane tender USS Christiana stationed there to support the aircraft. After the war, fishing resumed its dominance. Abplanalp bought the lease in 1968 and proved to be a conscientious steward as well as a host: he began encouraging tag-and-release fishing in the early 1970s, years before catch-and-release became mainstream conservation practice.

Abplanalp's death in 2003 left the island without its benefactor, and nature delivered the final blow the following year. Hurricane Frances struck first, a Category 2 storm that battered the Bahamas in September 2004. Three weeks later, Hurricane Jeanne followed an eerily similar path, hitting the already-damaged Abacos as a Category 3. Between them, the two storms destroyed the hotel, severely damaged the marina, and wrecked much of the island's infrastructure. Walker's Cay was abandoned. For fourteen years it sat empty - no residents, no hotel, no functioning airport. The marina pilings rotted in the salt water. Vegetation reclaimed the cleared land. The northernmost island in the Bahamas reverted to something close to the uninhabited state Thomas Walker had found three centuries earlier, a hundred acres of scrub and coral surrounded by some of the best fishing water in the Atlantic.

In April 2018, Texas businessman and philanthropist Carl Allen purchased Walker's Cay and announced plans to rebuild. Permitting negotiations with Bahamian authorities occupied much of 2019, but construction followed steadily. The marina reopened in 2021, and sportfishing tournaments returned to the island that same year - the Blue Marlin Invitational drawing dozens of competing boats back to waters that had gone largely unfished for over a decade. Allen's redevelopment has been gradual and deliberate, rebuilding infrastructure while respecting the conservation ethic that Abplanalp had established. The surrounding waters are designated as Walker's Cay National Park, a protected marine area. Whether the island recaptures the celebrity glamour of the Nixon era remains to be seen, but the fish never left. The deep-water drop-off on the northern edge still holds blue marlin, and the shallow bank still glows that particular shade of Bahamian turquoise visible from thousands of feet above.