Turks and Caicos History - From Lucayans to Beach Bums

Every year, the exotic Turks and Caicos attract more and more travelers, and every year, more people from all over the world decide to call the islands home. Despite this growing popularity as a tourist destination and an increasingly diverse culture, the country's history tells a much simpler story.

Before Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, the Fishing Turks and Caicos Islands Indians lived on the island for almost a millennium during a quiet epoch of Turks and Caicos history.

These indigenous people bequeathed a rich heritage of seafaring, salt raking, and farming and inhabited in sparse populations the island that we now call "Grand Turk." The names of the islands still bear words from the original inhabitants' language. "Turk" references the indigenous Turk's Head Cactus, and "Caicos" derives from the Lucayan phrase, "caya hico," which means "string of islands." The language of the Lucayans, Arawak, has also given us "canoe" and "Caribbean."

Roughly thirty years after Columbus visited the Caribbean, Bermudians migrated to the islands to rake salt and send it back to their homeland. But passage to the island was never easy. Although the shallow waters that surround the island offer ideal conditions for salt raking, ships could hardly navigate the shallow waters, and shipwrecks were a common event. Over 1000 have occurred.

Around 1706, the French and Spanish briefly claimed the Turks and Caicos Islands from the Bermudians, later followed by the British. During British reign, pirates and British loyalists fleeing George Washington and others in the pre-revolutionary United sought out the islands as a haven.

With the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Britain finally gained full control of Turks and Caicos, and the British Bahama colony oversaw their administration. Governance of the forty islands and cays soon became difficult, so in 1874 control passed to the British Crown Colony of Jamaica.

After Jamaica gained independence in 1962, Turks and Caicos became a British Crown Colony, and the country still assumes this status.

The 1980s brought perhaps the most significant change in recent Turks and Caicos history. The opening of the now iconic Club Med transformed Providenciales into the popular tourist destination it is today.

Some beach enthusiasts consider the islands, and especially the twelve miles of Grace Bay Beach, to be the world's premier beach destination.

Today, Turks and Caicos thrives on commercial fishing, offshore financial services, and tourism, attracting thousands of families, divers, and beachgoers every year.

The islands have also garnered interest from international investors because they are a tax haven. Residents incur no taxes for income, capitol gains, corporate profits, inheritances, or estates.

Although Turks and Caicos boasts the fastest growing economy in the Caribbean, the locals and conservationist have made grand efforts to preserve the natural environments where their ancestors once lived, fished, and salt-raked.

The Turks and Caicos Islands step into the modern world while attempting to preserve local heritage, custom, and tradition.