Brief History

The First Inhabitants

Long before Europeans laid claim to the Baja peninsula, there were three linguistically distinct yet culturally similar groups living there. The Cochimí and Guaycura roamed the north and central regions while the Pericú wandered the Cape Region and southern Sea of Cortez islands. All were late Stone Age semi-nomadic hunters and gatherers who lived without agriculture, domestic animals, or permanent living structures.

Early Exploration

With England a rival for sea trade routes, the Spanish were looking for an alternate route to the Orient and believed California to be an island. Baja California was actually discovered in 1534 by Spanish mutineers, who ended up near La Paz, now the capital of Baja California Sur. The mutineers were part of a convoy sent by Hernan Cortez, the conqueror of Mexico, to investigate claims of great riches and find the fabled Straights of Annan, leading to the Orient. Led by pilot Fortún Jimínez, the mutineers were murdered by the Guaycura for mistreating Indian women. Two survivors returned to the mainland with tales of abundant pearls, causing Cortez to launch another voyage the following year. The official date of discovery is May 3, 1535, when Cortez sailed into La Paz with three ships and over 500 people, christening the area Santa Cruz. Early Exploration

Cortez had been swayed by an intoxicating legend in a well-read book during the time of the Conquest, Las Sergas de Esplandián by Garci-Ordoñez de Montalvo. These tales were of a far off island called California, an earthly paradise of beautiful Amazon women and a treasure trove of gold. California was said to be derived from the Latin words, callida fornax, meaning hot oven, and first appeared in 1556 in Spanish navigator Francisco Ulloa s ship diary, but the legend of California and her queen, Calafia, appears more likely.

Colonization was defeated by lack of food, water, and hostile Indians. Theconqueror of Mexico would not live to see California colonized by Spain. Queen Calafia s fabled fortune in gold did not exist, but in its place, Cortez discovered riches beneath the sea. Cortez appeased his king and queen with a bounty of fabulous pearls; and until the late 1940s, pearling brought prosperity to the Southern peninsula.

The Cross and Not the Sword

After many failed attempts at colonization, and fed up with losing precious cargo, the Spanish Crown authorized an expedition to Baja California led by Admiral Isidor Atondo y Antillon and Jesuit Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino in 1683. The group landed in La Paz, and founded a settlement, which was abandoned three months later for lack of water and supplies. After returning to mainland Mexico, they set out again, establishing a new colony at San Bruno further north. After almost two years, once again they were forced back to the mainland, never to return.

Then, in October of 1697, Padre Juan Maria Salvatierra arrived in San Bruno and moved the mission south, naming it Nuestra Señora de Loreto. The settlement became the capital of the Californias. The Jesuits founded 20 missions, from Catavina midway up the peninsula, to the southern shore at SanJose del Cabo. Other mission sites in the southern region are Santiago,

Todos Santos, and La Paz, all founded by Jesuits in the early 1700s. Jesuit Padre Nicolas Tamaral founded Misión Estero de Las Palmas de San José Añuiti in 1730. Although he baptized 3,000 Pericú, his met a violent end in the struggle to tame the barren and wild peninsula. Tamaral was murdered and his body burned on October 3, 1734, during the 1734-37 Pericue Indian revolt over the natives practice of polygamy.

Eventually abandoned, the San Jose mission became a way station of the Santiago mission in 1748. The original mission site was briefly situated near the estuary, and then moved inland seven kilometers, before its reconstruction near the present Antonio Mijares Secondary School on Calle Valerio González. Destroyed in the flood of 1793, it was rebuilt in 1799 at the present site downtown across from San Jose s main square, and abandoned in 1840 during the secularization period. Heavily damaged by the September 1918 hurricane, the reconstruction was completed in the 1950s, with the addition of twin bell towers and an annex for the priest s living quarters. A tile mural over the church entrance depicts the murder of Padre Tamaral in vivid detail.

The Jesuits ministered until 1768, when they were expelled by Spain. The Crown was swayed by charges from garrison soldiers, under tight control by the missionaries, and from unhappy colonists, who accused the order of preventing the establishment of towns away from J

Jesuit control. Charged with exploitation, and of hoarding wealth and supplies, the Jesuits left in disgrace on a forced march to the sea.

Their replacements, the Franciscans, encountered impoverished missions, depopulated by epidemics. Then the Dominicans dominated the peninsula until Mexico s independence from Spain in 1821. By then few of the peninsula s original 40,000 to 50,000 Indians remained.

Independence and War with the United States

The early 1800s saw the Mexican Wars of Independence, with Mexico a sovereign nation by 1821. For the next hundred years the Cape Region was a sleepy outpost of ranchers, farmers and fishermen, interrupted by the U.S. Mexico War of 1846-48, when 20 U.S. Marines occupied San Jose del Cabo for two months in 1847. Leading a charge to dislodge thze invaders, Lt. Antonio Mijares was killed by a cannonball. In memory, San Jose's main square and boulevard bear his name.

 The Twentieth Century

San Jose del Cabo boomed during the Golden Decade between the mid 1920 and 1930s, with the cultivation of sugar cane, tomatoes and other crops, and big tuna and shark fishing. In tiny Cabo San Lucas, the tuna packing plant was the only industry.

During World War II, reconnaissance pilots spotted huge game fish around the tip of the Baja peninsula, and began flying down in private planes to fish and hunt in seclusion. By the 1960s, the tip of the Baja had become a hideaway for celebrities and world leaders like Bing Crosby, Desi Arnaz, John Wayne, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Club Las Cruces south of La Paz was the first exclusive resort, followed by the Hotel Palmilla, the old Hacienda and Cabo San Lucas hotels, and the Hotel Finisterra.

Los Cabos Opens Its Doors to the World

In 1973, the transpeninsular highway from Tijuana to Cabo San Lucas opened the nearly 1,000-mile-long peninsula to adventurers. The tip of the peninsula was a secret no more. With development by the federal agency FONATUR in the 1970s, the new International Airport, and the Cabo San Lucas marina, the area was christened Los Cabos (The Capes), and the rest, as they say, is history.