The indigenous Lucayan people called the Acklins as Yabaque, meaning "large western land".

[2] The islands were settled by American Loyalists in the late 1780s who set up cotton plantations maintained by over 1,000 slaves.

An ancient site, thought to be one of the largest Lucayan settlements in The Bahamas, sits along Pompey Bay Beach, just south of Spring Point.

Ten ancient Lucayan sites have been unearthed by National Geographic Society archeologists on Samana Cay alone, which is northeast of Spring Point in Acklins.

Plana Cays, also northeast of Spring Point, is a protected reserve for endangered great iguanas and the very rare Bahamian hutia (a guinea pig-like rodent), the only native mammal of The Bahamas.