Van Winkle hired hundreds of laborers to dredge out the salt marsh and blasted a cut into the lagoon from the sea, planted 5,000 palm trees and built over a mile of meandering concrete paths.

John T. McCutcheon was the chief foreign correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and political cartoonist.

[1] He purchased the island (Salt Cay) by mail sight unseen for $17,500 from the estate of Van Winkle, a New Jersey manufacturer who had died.

On a sunny, clear, windless day, the island experienced 9 metre (30 foot) swells generated by the storm over 2,000 km (1,200 mi)[2] away.

In 1993, Dolphin Encounters, a marine mammal facility, began educational and commercial programs on Blue Lagoon Island.