The Turks and Caicos Islands Islands are Britain's overseas territory. They are located in the southeastern part of the Bahamas and consist of 45 islands, 8 of which are inhabited. The island group Turks gets its name from a common kind of cactus, like a feather brush. The islands of Turks and Caicos are grown - beans, citrus, vegetables, corn, etc. In the seventeenth century, salt merchants cleaned up much of the island's vegetation and built saltboards where ocean water evaporates to produce crystallized salt. So salt production became a major livelihood of the islands until the 1960s. Now the islands of Turks and Caicos are most lucrative tourism, finance and fishing.