introduction •
history • National
Park • the islands
• environment •
World Heritage Site •
map • nature
The
first recorded discovery of the Galapagos Islands was in 1535, when the
ship of the Bishop of Panama, Thomas de Berlanger, accidentally drifted
off course on the way from Panama to Peru.
The bishop reported his discovery to King Charles V of Spain,
describing in great detail the sea lions, birds and especially the large
number of galapagos, or giant
tortoises, from which the island received it's name. For
over three centuries the islands were of little use other than a haven
for pirates who rested on the rocky shores between attacks, and nicknamed
them "Enchanted islands" due to their desolate and haunting landscape.
Whalers and sealers also arrived, greatly reducing the island's
population of seals and sperm whales as well as the giant tortoises, which
they caught in the thousands and stacked, alive, in ships' holds for fresh
meat. Then in 1835, exactly
300 years after the islands had been discovered, the young scientist
Charles Darwin arrived on the Galapagos.
Darwin stayed on the islands for five weeks, during which he made
notes and collected important evidence to support his developing theory
of evolution. Nearly 20 years
later, Darwin used these observations, combined with others, in the publication
of his influential book "On the Origin of Species."
After
the liberation of South America from Spain in the 1830's, Ecuador
formally annexed the Galapagos in 1832.
So while Darwin was gathering evidence for his theory of evolution,
a settlement had been going underway on the island of Floreana,
led by the first Governor General of the Galapagos, Jose Villamil.
This first settlement was really more of a penal colony,
consisting mainly of soldiers who had been sentenced to death for mutiny,
political prisoners and common criminals.
The quality of the labor force did not deter the ambitions of Villamil,
who tried to make the settlement successful first with farming, then mining
coal and finally by collecting the vast amounts of nitrate rich bird guano
on the island. None of these
attempts amounted to much, and it wasn't until 1897 that the first successful
settlements were founded.
By
far the most interesting settlers that arrived in the Galapagos were three
groups of Germans who arrived in the 1930's.
The first group comprised of a baroness and her three lovers, the
second, a couple from Cologne called the Wittmers, and the third,
an eccentric, vegetarian Dr Friedich Ritter and his mistress.
Whether the incidents that surrounded them were foul play or simply
coincidence is still being speculated about, for mysteriously the settlers
began to disappear. The baroness
and one lover simply disappeared while another died in a boating accident,
and Dr Ritter died from food poisoning after eating chicken. The only ones to survive were the Wittmers, whose descendants
still live on the island.
In
1934, as more scientists became interested in the Galapagos' unique environment,
some islands were declared wildlife sanctuaries.
However, the degradation of the islands wildlife still continued
and in 1941 Waldo Schmidt of the Smithsonian Institute visited the island
with the object of building a research station, to the great approval
of President Roosevelt who had visited the islands himself in 1938.
Unfortunately, Pearl Harbor intervened and instead of a research
center, the United States used funds to build a US airbase.
Finally,
in 1959, with funds raised from various scientists and the United
Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations (UNESCO) the Charles
Darwin Research Center was established. That same year, Ecuador
declared the Galapagos a national park and 95% of the archipelago was
protected.
Organized tourism began in the mid-60s with a little over 1,000
visitors a year, a number which has increased ten-fold over the decades
with an estimated 60,000 tourists visiting the islands in 1991. UNESCO
placed the Galapagos Islands on the World Heritage List in 1978.
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