History of the Turks and Caicos

Long before Christopher Columbus set foot in the New World, the islands of the Turks and Caicos were inhabited by the Taíno and Lucayan people, who arrived by canoe from Hispaniola around 700 AD.

Words such as "canoe", "Caribbean" and "caicos" (from caya hico, "string of islands") come from the Arawak language. Archaeologists have found Lucayan sites on Grand Turk, Middle Caicos and Providenciales.

Many historians believe Columbus's first landfall in 1492 may have been Grand Turk. Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León is recorded passing through in 1512.

Within a few decades the Lucayan population was devastated by enslavement and disease, and the islands lay mostly empty, visited by pirates who hid among the cays.

No one paid much attention to the islands until Bermudians began raking salt on Grand Turk, Salt Cay and South Caicos in the late 1600s. The low-lying ponds were ideal for evaporating sea water.

For the next few hundred years salt was the backbone of the economy. Bermudians arrived each salt season, and the ships they used were copied to become the Caicos Sloops — the only link between the scattered islands and the rest of the world.

After the American Revolution, Loyalists from the southern colonies were granted land in the Caicos Islands and brought enslaved Africans to grow cotton and sisal. Ruins such as Wade's Green on North Caicos and Cheshire Hall on Providenciales still stand today.

Poor soil, hurricanes and pests ended the plantations within a generation, and many descendants of those enslaved people became the founding families of today's Belongers.

Slavery was abolished across the British Empire in 1834. In 1841 the Spanish slave ship Trouvadore wrecked off Middle Caicos; the nearly 200 Africans aboard were freed and settled in the islands — a story still honored today.

The islands were administered as part of the Bahamas until 1848, when the inhabitants successfully petitioned to become a separate colony governed by a council president under the supervision of the governor of Jamaica.

This arrangement proved a financial burden, and in 1873 the islands were annexed to Jamaica with a commissioner and a Legislative Board.

The islands remained a dependency of Jamaica until 1959, when they received their own administrator — although Jamaica's governor remained governor of the islands.

On 20 February 1962, astronaut John Glenn splashed down near Grand Turk after the first American orbit of Earth, putting the islands on the world map.

When Jamaica became independent in August 1962, the Turks and Caicos Islands became a British crown colony. From 1965 the governor of the Bahamas also oversaw the islands' affairs, until the Bahamas' independence in 1973 gave the islands their own governor.

Salt raking ended in 1964, and attention turned to the sea and tourism.

The first constitution came in 1976, with JAGS McCartney becoming the first Chief Minister. Today the islands are a British Overseas Territory with a Premier and elected House of Assembly.

The opening of Club Med in 1984 and the development of Grace Bay transformed Providenciales into a world-famous destination — while Grand Turk, Salt Cay and the Caicos islands keep the old stories alive.