History of San Jose del Cabo
Everyone has heard about Los Cabos, located at the southern tip of the superb Baja California peninsula. It is a vacation resort mecca blessed with a great climate and an average year round temperature of 78 degrees F. Los Cabos is the excellent place to plan your retirement in one of many fine Los Cabos Homes But exactly where in Los Cabos is the place for you? Los Cabos collectively refers to two picturesque towns, Cabo San Lucas at the southern tip and San José del Cabo 20 miles to the northeast.
Just ten mins from Los Cabos International airport lies the tranquil colonial city of San José del Cabo. . In contrast to the hustle and bustle party atmosphere seen in Cabo San Lucas, San José del Cabo is quaint and colorful with a colonial plaza centered round its impressive mission in the town square.
San Jose del Cabo boasts an fascinating and colourful history.
Spanish galleons first visited Estero San Jose at the mouth of the Rio San Jose to obtain fresh drinking water close to the end of their lengthy voyages from the Philippines to Acapulco in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. As pirate raids along the coastline in between Cabo San Lucas and La Paz became a problem, the need for a permanent Spanish settlement at the tip of the cape became more and more urgent. The increasing unrest amongst the Guaycura and Pericu Indians south of Loreto also threatened to engulf mission areas to the north. As a outcome, the Spanish were compelled to deliver armed troops to the Cape area to quell the Indian uprisings in 1723, 1725 and 1729.
In 1730, Jesuit Padre Nicholas Tamaral traveled south from Mission La Purisima and founded Mission San Jose del Cabo on a mesa overlooking the Rio San Jose some 5 km. north of the current town site. Owing to the overwhelming existence of mosquitoes at this site, Tamaral quickly moved the mission to the mouth of the estuary on a rise flanked by Cerro del Vigia and Cerro de la Cruz.Tamaral and the Pericus got along fine till he pronounced an injunction against Polygamy, a long custom in Pericu society.robust>
After Tamaral punished a Pericu Shaman for violating the anti-polygamy decree, the Indians rebelled and burned both the San Jose and Santiago missions in October of 1734. Tamaral was killed in the attack. Soon thereafter the Spanish established a presidio, which served the twin purpose of guarding the community from insurgent Indians and the estuary from English pirates.
By 1767, almost all the Indians in the region had died either of European ailments or in skirmishes with the Spanish. Surviving mission Indians were moved to missions farther north, but San Jose del Cabo remained an critical Spanish military outpost till the mid-19th century when the presidio was turned over to Mexican nationals.
Throughout the Mexican American War (1846-48), marines from the U.S. frigate Portsmouth briefly occupied the city. A bloody siege ensued and the Mexicans prevailed under the leadership of Mexican Naval officer Jose Antonio Mijares. Plaza Mijares, San Jose’s city Plaza is named to commemorate his victory. As mining in the Cape Area gave out during the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries, San Jose del Cabo lost population together with the rest of the region. A few farmers began trickling into the San Jose area in the 30s and in 1940 the church was rebuilt.
San Jose del Cabo remained mainly a backwater right up until the Cape started bringing in sport fishers and later the sun-and-sand-set in the ’60s and ’70s. Since the late 1970s, FONATUR (Foundation Nacional de Fomento del Turismo or National Foundation for Tourism Development) has sponsored several tourist developments along San Jose’s shoreline. Luckily, the developments have done little to alter San Jose’s Spanish colonial character. Local residents take satisfaction in restoring the cities 18th century architecture and preserving its quiet, laid back ambiance. Today, San Jose del Cabo gives a welcome respite from the busy, fiesta ambiance seen 20 miles south in Cabo San Lucas.
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