Santa Maria

Santa Maria is the southeastern island of the Azores, with a hilly interior above its Atlantic shores. It was the first island of the archipelago to receive a Portuguese settlement, around 1440, under Gonçalo Velho Cabral. Vila do Porto became the first town in the islands. On his return from his first voyage to America in 1493, Christopher Columbus stopped at Santa Maria, where members of his crew went ashore at Anjos.