History

Christopher Columbus was on his second voyage in his quest to “discover” the New World when he arrived in Puerto Rico [1] in 1493. He christened the island San Juan Bautista after John the Baptist, claimed it as a property of Spain, and went on his merry way. But among his crew was a lieutenant named Juan Ponce de León, who shared Columbus’s passion for exploration and colonization.

In 1508 Ponce de León returned to the island to establish a settlement in a nearly landlocked bit of marshland just west of San Juan [2], which he called Caparra. He couldn’t have made a poorer choice for a new settlement. Virtually uninhabitable and strategically ineffective, the settlement was relocated around 1521 to what is now Old San Juan [3]. Originally the new settlement was called Puerto Rico for its “rich port.” It’s not clear why—possibly a cartographer’s mistake—but soon after it was founded, the name of the settlement was switched with the name of the island.

The history of San Juan [2] is inextricable from that of the island itself; for more information on San Juan’s and Puerto Rico’s history, see the History [4] pages in the Background section.