Grand Turk: where Columbus may have first landed

Former historic capital of Turks and Caicos, Grand Turk claims the possible first landfall of Christopher Columbus in the New World in 1492.

Local taxis remain the most common way to move on the island where Columbus may have first touched ground.

The National Museum of Turks and Caicos, housed in a colonial building, displays artifacts from the oldest European shipwreck ever found in the Western Hemisphere.

Just steps away, the Grand Turk Lighthouse, made of prefabricated cast iron imported from England in the Nineteenth century, remains a symbol of Caribbean maritime history.

Continuing along the coast, one dives on the coral wall, which drops steeply just hundreds of meters from shore.

Toward evening, Cockburn Town's historic center animates with restaurants in well-preserved Bermudian colonial buildings.

Some historians argue that Grand Turk, not San Salvador in the Bahamas, was Christopher Columbus's first landing point in the Americas in 1492, a theory still debated among scholars.

The coral wall off Grand Turk drops nearly vertically from just a few meters in depth to over twelve hundred meters, a geological phenomenon that attracts experienced divers from around the world each season, especially during migrating whales' passage.