The river gradually filled the bay with silt comprising post-orogenic, miocenic, and quaternary material, producing a fertile alluvial plain, on which agriculture could begin by the Bronze Age.

[4] Archaeological finds show human habitation around Salobreña at the rocky promontory known as the Peñon beginning in the Neolithic period, when the Peñon was still an island, with strata perhaps beginning as early as the palaeolithic period and continuing into the Bronze Age at the Cueva del Capitán (Captain's Cave) in the nearby hamlet of Lobres.

Evidence of Bronze Age settlement from around 1500 BCE has also been found on the Salobreña headland and, slightly further inland again, Monte Hacho.

[5] Salobreña is thought to have experienced contact with the Phoenicians around the eighth century BCE and then Greek and Punic culture around the sixth.

In the nineteenth century, however, Salobreña was strategically important in the Spanish War of Independence, and also adopted new steam-technologies for sugar production pioneered in Cuba.

The expansion of the town in the second half of the nineteenth century that was driven by a boom in sugar-cane production led to the demolition of the last remains of its medieval walls.

[14] The last remaining cane sugar factory in Europe was located along the coast just west of the village of La Caleta de Salobreña.