Pearl Islands Historical Timeline

The Pearl Islands take their name from the pearl oyster beds that once made them one of the most valuable pearl-fishing grounds in the Spanish colonial Americas, with harvesting dating back to before European contact and continuing intensively under Spanish rule. Indigenous divers, and later enslaved and forced laborers, worked the oyster beds for centuries, and the islands' pearls became a significant export of colonial Panama.

In the 20th century the islands took on new roles — Contadora Island hosted the exiled Shah of Iran in the early 1980s, and the archipelago later gained international recognition as the filming location for numerous seasons of the American version of "Survivor," introducing the islands to a global television audience largely unaware of their earlier pearl-diving history.