[2] At present, a Reserve Component maintains a military presence in the area, but the inlet, along with a civilian airport, is the focus of local tourism and the fishing industry.

[8][9][10] Late in the Pre-Columbian era, a group of Kalinagos had begun a gradual migration from the Orinoco's basin, occupying the Lesser Antilles while moving north and reaching the nearby islands of Vieques and Culebra.

[16] European invaders had entered Puerto Rico from the west in search of the island's meager mineral wealth and seeking the submission of densely populated Taíno kingdoms.

[18] The alliance between caciques on the east and the more battled-experience Kalinagos from Vieques and Culebra however, eventually slowed down the Spanish advance and made the eastern coast less appealing to the colonizers.

[16] While Spanish colonists established a prosperous harbor on the San Juan Bay, no major port developed on Ensenada Honda for most of the colonial period, regardless of its appealing qualities.

[21] In 1819, according to a letter from Captain José de Torres, corsairs, apparently South American insurgents (patriots), determined to subvert the Spanish colonial power, landed on the Ensenada Honda but were repelled by the Fajardo local militia.

[a][25] In 1869, the Spanish colonial government began to pay closer attention to the bay with the planning of a lighthouse on Isla Cabras, which sits at the inlet's entrance.

"[29] The U.S. Navy interest in Ensenada Honda and the shorelines of Vieques and Culebra dates back to the 1898 Spanish–American War when U.S. warships rounded the island, and its officers took tactical notes of its contours.

In May 1940, Captain R. A. Spruance, Commandant of the Tenth Naval District, referred to Pettigrew's 1919 report to request a fleet base in the Puerto Rico area.

The political and legislative groundwork for the acquisition of military terrain coincided with Puerto Rico's first agrarian reform, which facilitated the relocation of peasant families without property title and purchasing from small-holding owners.

Military installations now occupied Ceiba's finest farming plots and marine assets, in addition to extended stretches of crucial coastal land.

The rapid development also evicted Over 4,000 of Ceiba's 18,000 residents from their homes, most of whom were agregados, families that had no legal title to their land, but held centuries-old traditional de facto rights instead.

[34] The Roosevelt Roads base closed in March 2004 under the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) program on that date Department of the Navy transferred its property on the eastern end of the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico to the administrative jurisdiction of the Department of Interior as required under the Floyd D. Spence National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (Public Law 106-398), as amended by Section 1049 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002 (Public Law 107-107).