Providenciales

Before tourism, Providenciales was sparsely populated, and its hardy settlers tried to make a living from sea salt and cotton. After the American Revolution Loyalist planters arrived with enslaved Africans, and the ruins of Cheshire Hall, a sisal and cotton plantation owned by Thomas Stubbs from the late 1700s until 1810, still stand on a hilltop near Downtown. Remnants of Caribbean piracy survive at Osprey Rock and Sapodilla Hill.

The island changed late and fast. As recently as 1964 it had no wheeled vehicle, no roads, no piped water, no telephones and no electricity. In 1967 a developer, Provident Limited, won permission to build an airstrip, a port and a hotel, and flew in prospective land buyers from Florida in a Second World War DC-3. The first beachfront resort opened on Grace Bay in 1984, and its owner funded an upgrade of the airstrip for larger aircraft in the 1980s; in 1984 the port at South Dock was upgraded for container shipping.

From the 1990s Grace Bay became a luxury destination, and more than 20 resorts opened between 1995 and 2005. Most of the island's buildings date from after 1980, and there is no traditional downtown — only open-air shopping centres and mixed-use developments. A runway extension and renovation of the airport were completed by the end of 2014, and in 2023 the airport was officially renamed Howard Hamilton International Airport. Retirees from around the world have fuelled a boom in house building, and in 2024 the territory as a whole recorded more than two million visitors.

Providenciales is the most developed and most mixed of the islands. Belongers, the descendants of enslaved Africans and the old salt-raking and planting communities, share it with workers from Haiti, the Dominican Republic and elsewhere, with retirees from abroad and with visitors. Haitian Creole and Spanish are widely spoken alongside the local English, and church remains at the centre of island life.

The islands are best known musically for ripsaw, a rhythm scraped on a carpenter's handsaw with drums, box guitar and accordion, which began in North and Middle Caicos. Since 2003 the tourist board has held a series of concerts each late summer, the Turks and Caicos Music and Cultural Festival, with local performers and artists from around the Caribbean and the United States.

Conch is a cultural emblem as well as a food. Blue Hills, one of the island's original settlements, hosts the annual Conch Festival in November, and on Boxing Day the Maskanoo street festival brings parades, costumes, music and dancing to the Grace Bay area. Sport on the island ranges from kiteboarding on Long Bay to an 18-hole golf course that has twice hosted the Caribbean Amateur Open.

Providenciales had 23,769 residents at the 2012 census, the latest island-by-island count published, and is home to a majority of the territory's people. It is the most developed and tourism-oriented of the islands: resorts, condos, restaurants, dive shops and boat charters provide most of the work, alongside building, retail and offices, and a growing number of retirees have settled on the island.

Before tourism there were three small centres of population — Blue Hills, The Bight on Grace Bay, and Five Cays. All three have grown, and many new houses have been built in the east and south, with larger communities at Leeward, Long Bay and Chalk Sound. Downtown and Kew Town lie near the airport, and Wheeland is in the north-west corner. Luxury homes stand close to pockets of makeshift shacks, a sign of how unevenly the island has grown.

Life runs along the Leeward Highway, where most shops, plazas and services are found. With no public transport, almost everyone depends on a car. Nearly all food is imported and expensive, and none of the major fast-food chains operate on the island, so supermarkets, local restaurants and roadside conch shacks fill the gap. Public secondary education is provided by Clement Howell High School and Long Bay High School.

Conch is the staple: cracked (pounded and fried), as fritters, in chowder, or raw as conch salad, chopped with lime and vegetables and mixed to order. The beach shacks of Blue Hills are the best-known place to eat it, and the territory also has the world's only conch farm. Grouper, snapper and spiny lobster round out the seafood, some of it landed at the fishermen's dock at Five Cays and served at the grills nearby.

Johnnycake is the traditional side, and the Haitian community has made griot, fried pork served with rice, widely available. Rum is the usual drink, often as rum punch, and Turks Head beer is served at the marina grills.

Because almost everything else is imported, the island's supermarkets stock mostly American brands, and the restaurants of Grace Bay serve a broad international range, from Italian and Mediterranean to Japanese, at prices well above the mainland's. The cheapest and most local meals remain those from the conch shacks and the casual grills around Turtle Cove and Five Cays.