The modern history of the Le Touquet started with , a notary from Paris, and his partners buying land on the Cape of Le Touquet. They tried without success to convert the rather unproductive warrens for agricultural use, and after they failed, Daloz bought all the land from his other partners and decided to plant a forest and build a manor on his estate. The notary founded the village of Le Touquet-Paris-Plage in April 1882, at first known as Paris-Plage. The subdivision grew so quickly that it drew the attention of John Robinson Whitley, an English entrepreneur who saw a business opportunity in creating an ultra-luxury 'meeting place' between wealthy Englishmen and Frenchmen with an emphasis on sports and generally "health through pleasure". Mayville, as he called the initial project, never materialised, but Whitley, together with his partner Allen Stoneham, implemented a scaled-down version of Mayville's grandiose plans once they bought out most lands from the Daloz's manor at an auction in 1902.
Despite the scaling-down, Le Touquet before World War II gained a reputation of a posh resort due to, among other things, several luxury hotels and an abundance of sports activities associated with the upper class, particularly those catering to the tastes of British guests. In fact, the town's first golf course was inaugurated by Lord Balfour, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Thanks to the continued construction boom, Paris-Plage was split from the original commune of Cucq in 1912. The peak of Le Touquet's prosperity came during the Roaring Twenties, as British elites dominated the life of the resort. The town had the largest casino by revenue in France just before the Great Depression. The crisis stopped the explosive growth of Le Touquet but the town came relatively unscathed because the aristocrats from the other side of the English Channel continued to come to Le Touquet as before. Many buildings built in the 1920s and 1930s were a testament of the city's riches.
Wars interrupted the development of Le Touquet. During World War I, the Allied military commandeered large hotels and converted them to makeshift hospitals to treat the wounded coming from the trenches of the Western Front. Enlisted soldiers, particularly those stationed at the nearby garrison in Étaples, were banned from the town to let officers use its facilities for themselves. The town hosted 6,000 Belgian refugees and the municipal administration of the frontline city of Ypres. Military presence was reintroduced in 1939 as World War II took off. Germans captured Le Touquet during the invasion of France in 1940, where they created a local headquarters for the Wehrmacht, the National Socialist Motor Corps and the Organisation Todt. Due to its position on the coast facing Britain, Germans ordered the construction of the Atlantic Wall, which led to the town being heavily fortified and mined. Le Touquet was liberated in September 1944, but it suffered extensive damage.
The town lost much of its traits associated with the British elites as the British sold their possessions to well-off locals and as the government of France decided to prioritise the development of the warmer French Riviera, by that time another popular destination with the high society. Since the 1970s, the town pursued a new strategy formulated by mayor Léonce Deprez, who wanted to make Le Touquet a "year-round resort", so new developments included an indoor thalassotherapy institute, the enduro race called and a flea market of antique items. His efforts were helped by improved rail and car connections to the town. The commune also launched massive acquisitions of sports- and culture-related properties. Le Touquet increasingly became populated by pensioners, which, as of 2014, constitute more than half of its permanent residents.
Before 1837 The earliest traces of human presence in the vicinity of Le Touquet are estimated to be from 240,000 years ago, based on the age of stone tools left by nomads near what is today Étaples. These human ancestors tended to live near the coast of the English Channel or in the valleys of the Authie and the Canche. Agriculture arrived in the area around 5th millennium BCE. By about 2000 BCE, the Canche was an established route for traders on the British Isles to go deeper into the continent, as confirmed by numerous archaeological findings in the estuary.
A significant Frankish trading post (emporium) known as Quentovic appeared in the early Middle Ages. Early hypotheses suggested a seaside location close to Le Touquet, but successful excavations in the 1970s and 1980s near La Calotterie, around upstream, proved that conjecture unlikely. At the time of Quentovic's existence, the territory where Le Touquet stands today was submerged under the English Channel, but sediments accumulated over centuries and pushed the coast to the west. From 1168, the owned the territories near Trépied and up to the sea, which was confirmed by documents from 1203 and 1624. Trépied was a fishing hamlet as well as a ferry station to cross the Canche; today it is part of the neighbouring commune of Cucq. Letters patent issued from the French king offered to plant beachgrass on the dunes to stabilise them.
In 1791, during the French Revolution, the abbey of Saint-Josse and its land were nationalised. The government then tried to sell the land, but Le Touquet's warrens were of little value, so when a local magistrate assessed the land's value in 1827, he found that it was still state property. After the survey, the government offered to sell in instalments of 60 hectares, but had to wait until 1836 for the first offer. That year, a Belgian buyer called Doms agreed to buy a total of of land for 80,000 francs ( € in ), but the sale was annulled because he failed to pay the promised sum. On the second try, the government found two new buyers, Daloz and a Mr. Alyon, who agreed to buy the same land for 150,000 francs ( € in ). The deal was finalised on 25 April 1837.
Alphonse Daloz's residence
At the beginning, Daloz and Alyon raised some sheep and cattle, but just after a year, they decided to abandon the venture as it was not breaking even. Alyon sold most of his land to two other people, Mr. Marion and Mr. de Naurois. The four went on to grow rye, Jerusalem artichoke and potatoes and created a new distillery, but they were still losing money. Thus, by 1855 the other three owners sold all their land to Daloz or his brother-in-law, Mr. Rigaud.
Daloz and Rigaud decided that agricultural use was not suitable for their land. They stabilised the dunes with beachgrass and decided to plant a forest instead. In the 1780s, had done just that in the Gironde for the same purpose, and his forest became the precursor to today's large Landes woods. It is likely that Daloz drew inspiration from that experiment. The harsh winter of 1860–61 destroyed the saplings, so the two owners had to plant the trees again. Daloz was serious about keeping title to the land, thus, in 1864, he built a small palace. He also put a lot of effort in the forest, but as an amateur silviculturist, he made some mistakes, such as not thinning his forest well or often enough or insisting on not touching any of his "beautiful trees", whatever their condition was. That said, Daloz's efforts received significant praise in an 1875 booklet by a local agriculturist. Visiting about the same time, Hippolyte de Villemessant, editor-in-chief of Le Figaro, was also impressed and coined the name "Paris-Plage" for the future development, not least due to its fairly developed infrastructure. In 1847, nearby Étaples was connected with Paris by railway. A semaphore on Cape Le Touquet was built eight years before that, and two lighthouses were inaugurated in 1852 to prevent ships from sinking in the treacherous shoals near Cape Le Touquet.
Villemessant gathered a few of his friends and offered to buy the parcel from Daloz for a very high sum, but Villemessant's illness and subsequent death meant the idea never came to fruition. Daloz then approached a former notary, a Mr. Billiet, to buy of land for 35,000 francs per hectare ( €) in ) for development purposes, but then the owner of the lands backed out at the last minute as he refused to certify the cession at the notary's office. Daloz decided to develop the area himself.
Beginnings of Paris-Plage In 1880, Daloz contacted Raymond Lens, a local surveyor, who then made the initial design for the first subdivision. Its construction was finished on 22 March 1882 and the first lots were inaugurated on 9 April. Interest in the area appeared very quickly. Already in 1884, an entrepreneur from Boulogne launched a regular horse-drawn omnibus connection from Étaples to Paris-Plage. Also in 1884, the first hotel, Hôtel Saint-Georges, appeared in Le Touquet, but it became a simple villa with the opening of the first of the big hotels of the resort, Le Grand-Hôtel, in 1887. In the meantime, 1886 saw the launch of a dedicated newspaper for the community, Paris-Plage.
In the early years of Paris-Plage, the Daloz family (Alphonse Daloz died in 1885) exercised full police powers over the new settlement as the commune of Cucq was never called to intervene; and when a garde champêtre (rural police officer) had to be called from the mayor's office, they were always accompanied with Daloz's agents. Growth of the new village sparked government's interest in the area. In 1886, the commune held the first hearing about Paris-Plage. Five years later, a dedicated garde champêtre was dispatched to Paris-Plage, thus taking law enforcement away from Daloz's hands. On the infrastructure front, a macadam road to the settlement was unveiled in 1888, and a narrow-gauge was built in 1900. Administratively, a local landlords' committee and a road commission were set up in 1889 and 1894 to manage the affairs of the settlement and fill the gaps where state administration did not reach yet.
The village expanded quickly: 30 people lived in Paris-Plage in 1882, 95 in 1892 and 318 ten years later. Most of the original residents came from Amiens, later followed by residents of Pas-de-Calais and neighbouring departments. In 1894, it had 163 buildings; by the end of 1902, there were 355. This included, among others, three hotels, seven restaurants and cafés, two pharmacies, two bakeries producing local bread, three butchers, a liquor store, a hairdresser's salon, a photographic studio, two bookshops, two coal depots, a public bath, a school and a church. By 1897, Le Touquet got its first casino, the Casino de la Plage.
An English investor, John Robinson Whitley, took note of the growth and saw a business opportunity as a developer. The new resort, which he named Mayville, was planned to be a 'meeting place' between wealthy Englishmen and Frenchmen with an emphasis on sports and generally "health through pleasure". The idea of a luxury resort itself was not new: Dieppe and particularly Deauville (next to Trouville), both in Normandy, were already developing in a rather similar way. Nor was the idea for a resort for the British a novelty, because Boulogne had already been a well-established UK contact point for more than 50 years. However, Whitley's idea was to combine the two concepts in one place.