 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. |
