Cayman Islands historical timeline

History

The Cayman Islands' history is short, maritime and largely without conquest: nobody lived here before the Europeans, and what a visitor sees -- the churches, the old houses of Bodden Town and Pedro St James, the banks of George Town -- is the record of a people who lived from the sea and then from the sea's neighbours' money.

Chronology

1503 Christopher Columbus sights the islands on 10 May on his final voyage and names them Las Tortugas for the turtles, soon hunted to near-extinction; archaeology has found no earlier human presence. Francis Drake is the first recorded English visitor in 1586.
1670 England takes formal control of the islands with Jamaica under the Treaty of Madrid, after first settlers from Jamaica reached Little Cayman and Cayman Brac in 1661–71 and were driven off by Spanish privateers; permanent settlement begins in the 1730s.
1794 On 8 February ten ships of a convoy from Jamaica wreck on the East End reef and the islanders rescue their crews: the Wreck of the Ten Sail, and the origin of the legend that the King promised never to tax them.
1833 Cayman Brac and Little Cayman are permanently settled, having been visited but not inhabited since Christopher Columbus named them Las Tortugas. It was the two smaller islands he found, not Grand Cayman, and they were settled last: two centuries of separate history is why the Sister Islands are a different place to visit rather than an annex of Grand Cayman, and why only Grand Cayman had institutionalised slavery by the time it was abolished.
1835 Emancipation ends slavery, which of the three islands only Grand Cayman had institutionalised; for a century the people live by fishing, turtling and the merchant marine.
1953 The first airfield in the Cayman Islands opens, along with the George Town public hospital. A colony of fishermen, turtlers and merchant seamen with no runway could not have become either a tourist destination or a financial centre, and both arrived within twenty years of the airfield.
1959 The first written constitution gives women the vote.
1962 At Jamaica's independence the Cayman Islands break their administrative links with Jamaica and opt to become a direct dependency of the British Crown, the chief official being the Administrator. The islands had been governed with Jamaica since 1670; choosing the Crown over the new neighbouring state is the decision the territory's entire later position rests on.
1966 Legislation is passed to enable and encourage the banking industry, and the governor's constitution of 1971 completes the arrangement. This is the founding date of the Cayman Islands as a financial centre -- everything a visitor notices about George Town, from the office towers to the population being more than half foreign-born, dates from this Act rather than from anything to do with the sea.
1972 The Cayman dollar replaces the Jamaican dollar and is pegged to the US dollar at 1.20 from 1 April 1974; tourism and finance come to make up 50 to 60 per cent of GDP between them.
2004 Hurricane Ivan strikes Grand Cayman on 11 September, the worst in 86 years, with an eight-foot storm surge over an island that lies largely at sea level; the same year captive-bred blue iguanas begin to be released into the wild.
2020 Same-sex civil partnerships are legalised; the territory of over 90,000 people, more than half of them from elsewhere, has the highest GDP per head in the Caribbean.

What survived, and how

The reef survived because the islands were too poor to build on it until the marine parks came; the blue iguana survived because a partnership bred it back from fifteen animals; the Sunday survived because the churches did.

What did not survive is the turtles that named the place, hunted out within decades of 1503, and the old Cayman's poverty, which nobody misses.

Verified against Wikipedia, September 2026.

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Sources & verification Covers the sourced claims on this page.

Checked against Wikipedia — The territory is a major tax haven mainly due to the state charging no tax on income earned or stored. With a GDP per capita of $97,750 in 2023, the Cayman…, It is believed that the first European to sight the islands was Christopher Columbus, on 10 May 1503, during his final voyage to the Americas. He named them…, England took formal control of the Cayman Islands, along with Jamaica, as a result of the Treaty of Madrid of 1670, On 8 February 1794, the Caymanians rescued the crews of a group of ten merchant ships, including HMS Convert, an incident that has since become known as the…, On 11 September 2004, the island of Grand Cayman, which lies largely unprotected at sea level, was battered by Hurricane Ivan, the worst hurricane to hit…, The predominant religion on the Cayman Islands is Christianity. It is practised by 67% of population in 2021, The first recorded English visitor was Sir Francis Drake in 1586, England took formal control of Cayman, along with Jamaica, under the Treaty of Madrid in 1670 after the first settlers came from Jamaica in 1661–71 to…, permanent settlement of the islands began in the 1730s, Grand Cayman was the only island of the three that had institutionalized slavery, in 1959 Cayman received its first written constitution which, for the first time, allowed women to vote, Upon Jamaica's independence in 1962, the Cayman Islands broke its administrative links with Jamaica and opted to become a direct dependency of the British Crown, During 1966, legislation was passed to enable and encourage the banking industry in Cayman. In 1971, the governmental structure of the islands was again…, receiving the honor of 'The Caribbean's Best Beach' in 2015 from Caribbean Travel and Life Magazine. It is public property and one is able to walk the full…, The Cayman Islands dollar (currency code KYD; symbol: $ or CI$) ... was introduced in 1972 to replace the Jamaican dollar ... The Cayman Islands dollar has…, Tourism is also a mainstay, accounting for about 70% of GDP and 75% of foreign currency earnings. The tourist industry is aimed at the luxury market and…, More than 92,000 companies were registered in the Cayman Islands as of 2014, including almost 600 banks and trust companies, fewer than 15 animals remained in the wild by 2003, Since 2004, hundreds of captive-bred animals have been released into a preserve on Grand Cayman run by a partnership headed by the Durrell Wildlife…, First established in 1968 as 'Mariculture Ltd' and later called 'Cayman Turtle Farm' ... the facility was initially used to breed the endangered green sea…, a historic shipwreck event that occurred off the East End of Grand Cayman on 8 February 1794. Ten ships that were part of a convoy on its way from Jamaica…, Columbus found the two smaller sister islands, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, and it was these two that he named Las Tortugas; they were not permanently settled until 1833, In 1953 the first airfield in the Cayman Islands was opened, as well as the George Town public hospital, Upon Jamaica's independence in 1962 the Cayman Islands broke their administrative links with Jamaica and opted to become a direct dependency of the British Crown, with the chief official of the islands being the Administrator, During 1966 legislation was passed to enable and encourage the banking industry in the Cayman Islands (September 2026).