Known to early settlers as Nine Mile Point, this island was first used commercially by the Cushman Meat Packing Company in the late 1860s. After the company left in 1878, Austrian Franz Joseph Frandolig, who had delivered cattle there for Cushman and Company, homesteaded the site with his family and established a large fig orchard. The family sold fruits and vegetables in Rockport and Fulton, maintained a vineyard that produced wine sold by the barrel, and built a salt works. They sold the property between 1901 and 1903. The severe hurricane of 1919 returned the island to its natural and uninhabited state, and in 1958 the local navigation district began offering it for development.