David: Chiriquí's Capital City

What David is

David, known as David City in colonial times, is a city and corregimiento in western Panama, the capital of Chiriquí Province, with an estimated population of 82,907 inhabitants as confirmed in 2013.^[1] It is the largest city in Panama that is not part of the Panama City metro area, and it is known for being the third-largest city in the country both in population and by GDP, as well as the largest city in western Panama.^[1] In plain terms, David is the fixed point of the western third of the country: the place where the banks, the wholesalers, the government offices, and the transport links concentrate, and the city that everyone driving the Pan-American Highway between Panama City and Costa Rica passes through.

Where it sits

David sits in a basin in south-central Chiriquí Province, roughly between Puerto Armuelles on the coast and Boquete in the mountains, lying below the water break on the David River at the foothills of the Cordillera de Talamanca.^[1] It is roughly 30 kilometres from the Costa Rican border and about 434 kilometres from Panama City, connected to both by the Pan-American Highway, and it is served by Enrique Malek International Airport.^[1] Volcán Barú, a potentially active volcano and the tallest mountain in Panama at 3,474 metres, is visible from the northern parts of the city.^[1][3] Those two facts, the highway and the airport, are what make David the trade hinge between Panama and Costa Rica rather than just a provincial capital.

A colonial foundation

David was founded in 1602 by the governor Juan López de Sequeira, which makes it one of the older Spanish-settled towns in Panama.^[1] The original settlement was laid out where Bolívar Park now stands, and for its first centuries it was a small administrative and agricultural town. It did not become a city of national consequence until the twentieth century, when the Pan-American Highway reached western Panama and the airport opened.

The city’s airport has its own piece of history. Enrique Malek International Airport, previously called David Field or San Jose Field during the Second World War, was an auxiliary of Howard Field and accommodated United States Army Air Forces personnel dedicated largely to training and reconnaissance missions along the Southeast Pacific coastline, from Honduras in the north to Peru in the south, as part of the defence of the Panama Canal.^[1] The military past is the reason the runway can handle the traffic it does today.

What the city actually does

San José de David (its official name) functions as a hub for the province’s commercial activities, mainly agriculture and cattle raising, and supplies the rest of the country; it is the region’s chief financial centre, with most national banks and international banks such as HSBC maintaining offices there, and it serves as a port of exports and imports with neighbouring Costa Rica.^[1] David is also one of the most industrialised cities in the country, a centre of manufacturing, heavy industry, and higher-technology communications.^[1] The practical upshot for a visitor is that David is the place in western Panama to find vehicle dealers, specialist medical care, building supplies, and bulk goods that the smaller highland and coastal towns cannot support.

The city’s relative affluence is a recurring note in descriptions of it: David is described as a relatively affluent city with a firmly established, dominant middle class and a very low unemployment and poverty index.^[1] That distinguishes it from the more tourist-oriented towns of the province and explains why it reads as a working regional capital rather than a destination.

The vanished railway

One historical layer worth knowing is the railway. From 1916 to 1949, Chiriquí Province had access to and employed a railway system, created by Belisario Porras to accelerate the development of the province and the exploitation of its agrarian products, a 165-kilometre line with its base of operations and main stations in the city, which cemented David’s importance as a merchant city for the western region.^[1] The railway is long gone, but its thirty-odd years of operation were what first locked David in as the distribution centre for the province’s agricultural output, a role the highway then inherited.

The city in March 1900

David also carries a small piece of national political history. In March 1900, Bolívar Park was the scene of the first battle of the Thousand Days’ War, the civil conflict between liberals and conservatives, with forces that would later march on towards the capital.^[1] The park where the city was founded is therefore also where one of the opening acts of Panama’s bloodiest civil war played out.

The city’s layout and landmarks

David reads, on the ground, as a grid of a commercial city laid over a colonial core. The original settlement was founded where Bolívar Park now stands, and through the nineteenth century the city had six streets, of which only four were populated, making up the city centre in the sector still known as Barrio Bolívar.^[1] The Ermita de San José, now the San José Cathedral, sat in that area and remains the fixed religious landmark of the old centre.^[1] Bolívar Park itself carries the city’s political memory: it was the scene of the first battle of the Thousand Days’ War in March 1900, and it is still the central plaza around which the commercial grid is organised.^[1]

Out from that colonial core the city spreads into the modern commercial districts, the banks, the dealerships, the shopping centres, and the transport terminals that make David the regional capital it is. There is no single tourist circuit: the city is traversed rather than toured, and the landmarks that matter to a visitor are practical: the airport, the bus terminal, the Pan-American Highway corridor, and the road junctions that fan out to Boquete, the coast, and the Costa Rican border.

The Costa Rica trade

The single economic fact that most defines David is its position relative to Costa Rica. The city is roughly 30 kilometres from the Costa Rican border and is a vital centre for trade between the two countries, functioning as a port of exports and imports with the neighbouring country and lying some 434 kilometres from Panama City.^[1] The Paso Canoa crossing, the main road border, is a short drive west, and the two-way traffic (Panamanian produce and manufactured goods heading west, Costa Rican products and Central American transit trade heading east) is what keeps David’s wholesale, logistics, and banking sectors busy.

That trade role is also why David’s financial sector is unusually deep for a provincial capital. San José de David is the region’s chief financial centre, and most national banks have offices there, including international banks such as HSBC.^[1] For a traveller that is invisible; for anyone doing business, or buying a vehicle, or arranging shipping between Panama and Costa Rica, it is the reason the city exists at the scale it does.

David as a base for the region

The practical case for staying in David rather than just passing through is its usefulness as a base. Because the city sits at the junction of the Pan-American Highway, the airport, and the spur roads into the highlands and to the coast, it is the natural hub for a loop of western Chiriquí. Boquete is about 40 minutes up the road to the north-east, on the lower slopes of Volcán Barú; the Volcán and Cerro Punta highland farming country is up the valley to the north-west, beyond the volcano’s western flank; the Pacific coast at Puerto Armuelles is south-west; and the Costa Rican border at Paso Canoa is a short run west.^[1]

What David does not offer is the scenery or the climate of those destinations. It sits in a hot lowland basin (its elevation is around sea level, even slightly below, at minus six metres), which is the flip side of being the transport hub: the same flat, hot basin that makes it a good road junction makes it less appealing as a place to spend the day than the mountains above it.^[1] The sensible pattern is to provision and overnight in David and spend the days in Boquete, the coast, or the highlands.

The city in the regional economy

David’s weight in the national economy is larger than its population suggests. As the largest city in western Panama and the third-largest in the country by GDP, it concentrates the wholesale distribution, the vehicle and machinery trade, the regional banking, and the light manufacturing that the western third of the country relies on.^[1] The highland towns produce the coffee and vegetables; the lowlands produce the cattle and cane; the coast produces the fish, and David is where all of it is aggregated, financed, and shipped onward, whether to Panama City along the highway or to Costa Rica across the border. The city’s relative affluence (a firmly established middle class and low unemployment and poverty indices) is the visible result of that role.^[1]

Getting there and getting around

For most travellers David is a transit point rather than a stop. Flights from Panama City land at Enrique Malek International; the Pan-American Highway carries buses and private vehicles from the capital (about six to seven hours), from Costa Rica across the Paso Canoa crossing (roughly 30 kilometres away), and from Santiago de Veraguas to the east.^[1] From David, the spur road south-west reaches the Pacific coast at Puerto Armuelles, the road north climbs to Boquete in about 40 minutes, and the route across to Volcán and Cerro Punta runs up the western side of Volcán Barú. There is no compelling reason to linger in the city centre for tourism, but it is the natural overnight and provisioning stop for anyone doing a loop of the province.

How David fits the province

David is the reason Chiriquí hangs together as an economic unit. The highland towns (Boquete, Volcán, Cerro Punta) produce the coffee and vegetables; the lowlands produce cattle, cane, and rice; and David is where all of it is bought, sold, banked, and shipped. The province page at locations/chiriqui-province lays out the lowland/highland split and the provincial context; this page is the city at the centre of it.

Quick reference

Where to read next

For the province David anchors, read locations/chiriqui-province; for the highland towns most visitors are actually heading to, locations/boquete and locations/volcan-and-cerro-punta. The physical setting, the Talamanca foothills and the volcano visible from town, is covered on geography/chiriqui-highlands and geography/volcan-baru.

Last reviewed: 2026-07-03