Long before Cap Cana existed, the whole eastern tip of the island of Hispaniola was inhabited by the Taíno, the native people of Arawak origin who dominated the Antilles at the arrival of the Europeans. According to the Spanish chronicles, the island was divided into five great chiefdoms or domains. The far east corresponded to the chiefdom of Higüey (also written Iguey or Higuayagua), ruled by the cacique Cayacoa and, later, by the famous cacica Higüanamá and by the cacique Cotubanamá, whose name is now borne by the national park that protects Saona Island, off these coasts.
The Taíno of the region lived from fishing, the gathering of fruit and shellfish, hunting and the cultivation of cassava, from which they made casabe. They were excellent navigators in their canoes and knew every cove, spring and cave of this limestone coastline, full of cenotes and karst formations. The caves of the area preserve traces of their presence, such as pictographs and petroglyphs, testimony to their spiritual and everyday life.
The coastal strip where Cap Cana now rises was a territory of springs, coconut palms and unspoiled beaches, without large settlements but well known to the peoples of the Higüey chiefdom. That Taíno heritage is the oldest substrate of the whole region and forms part of the identity of the Dominican east, even though modern tourist development has transformed it completely.
After the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492 and the founding of Santo Domingo in 1498 —the first permanent European city on the American continent—, the Spanish gradually subdued the chiefdoms of Hispaniola. The chiefdom of Higüey, in the east, was one of the last to fall: there were harshly repressed Taíno uprisings in the early 16th century, and the native population was decimated within a few decades by war, forced labor and, above all, the diseases brought from Europe.
With the gold exhausted and the Crown's attention turned toward Mexico and Peru, Hispaniola entered a long decline. The east of the island, far from Santo Domingo and without major mineral resources, remained a marginal region devoted to extensive cattle raising, small-scale sugar production and the use of natural resources such as coconut and timber. For centuries, the eastern coast —including the area of today's Cap Cana and Punta Cana— stayed practically uninhabited, covered with dry forest, palm groves and unspoiled beaches that almost no one reached.
This isolation, which for so long meant poverty and neglect, was paradoxically what preserved the natural landscapes of the east intact. The white-sand beaches, the turquoise waters and the coconut palms that today are the great tourist draw reached the 20th century almost unaltered, precisely because the region had remained apart from development throughout the entire colonial era and much of the republican one.
The great turning point in the history of the Dominican east occurred in the second half of the 20th century, with the discovery of its enormous tourist potential. In 1969, a group of investors —among them the American businessman Theodore (Ted) Kheel and the Dominican Frank Rainieri— acquired large stretches of unspoiled land in the Punta Cana area, then accessible only by dirt roads and without services. There, in the 1970s, the region's first tourist complex was born, the embryo of what is today one of the most important vacation hubs in the Caribbean.
The decisive milestone was the construction of Punta Cana International Airport, opened in 1984. It was a pioneering undertaking: the first privately managed and owned international airport in the world, with a rustic-style terminal, thatched (cana) roofs and architecture integrated into the tropical setting, which broke with the model of the big concrete terminals. That airport solved the main obstacle —access— and opened the door to the mass arrival of tourists directly to the eastern beaches.
From then on, the coastal strip between Punta Cana and Bávaro transformed at a dizzying pace. Decades of all-inclusive resorts, golf courses and real-estate developments turned what had been an uninhabited coastline into the tourist engine of the Dominican Republic, which came to receive millions of visitors a year, most of them through PUJ airport.
Cap Cana is, strictly speaking, a 21st-century creation. In the first decade of the 2000s, at the height of the Dominican east's boom, a large-scale integrated development project was conceived south of Punta Cana, aspiring to be a luxury destination planned from scratch, with an identity of its own, distinct from the neighboring all-inclusive resorts. The idea was to structure the complex around three great pillars: an international-class marina, championship golf courses and exclusive beaches and villas.
The project was designed over more than 120 km² of land facing the Caribbean Sea, which made it one of the largest integrated developments in the region. The Cap Cana Marina was built —designed to host large yachts and surrounded by dining and shops—, the Punta Espada golf course, designed by Jack Nicklaus and opened in the late 2000s (which came to host tournaments of the senior professional circuit), and residential sectors of luxury villas and resorts of international brands were developed next to beaches like Juanillo.
Like any large real-estate and tourism project, Cap Cana went through the turbulence of the 2008–2009 international financial crisis, which affected the sector worldwide. But over the years it established itself as one of the most recognized premium enclaves in the Caribbean, attracting a high-spending clientele, second homes and a luxury tourism seeking privacy, golf, boating and first-class services. Unlike the country's historic cities, its 'history' is brief but intense: that of an unspoiled landscape that in a few years transformed into a global destination.
Beyond its short tourist history, the Cap Cana area preserves a natural wealth rooted in the age-old geology of the east of Hispaniola. This whole coastline is formed of coral limestone, a karst terrain that water has shaped over thousands of years, creating caves, caverns and the characteristic cenotes: pits and lagoons of fresh or brackish water that surface underground. The most famous in the area is the Hoyo Azul, now part of Scape Park, a natural pool of intense blue at the foot of a cliff.
These cenotes and caves have a value that goes beyond the scenic. For the Taíno they were sacred places, sources of water and life, and in many caverns of the east pictographs and petroglyphs have been found that bear witness to their worldview. The area is part of an ecological setting that includes tropical dry forests, coastal mangroves and coral reefs offshore, the habitat of a rich marine fauna that is one of the attractions for snorkeling and diving.
Off these coasts, within the same natural context, stretches Cotubanamá National Park (formerly Del Este National Park), which protects the famous Saona Island and a valuable ecosystem of beaches, mangroves and reefs. That contrast —an ultra-modern luxury destination built on a landscape of ancient nature and Taíno heritage— is part of what makes Cap Cana singular: behind the golf, the marina and the villas, the deep geography of the Dominican east still beats.