Cabo San Lucas
Cabo San Lucas is a small city at the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula at 22°53′N 109°54′W / 22.88°N 109.90°W, in the municipality of Los Cabos in the state of Baja California Sur, Mexico. As of 2003, the population was some 40,000 people.
Cabo San Lucas is rapidly becoming a high-end holiday destination with a number of resorts and timeshare clubs appearing along the coast between San Lucas and San José del Cabo.
History
It is thought the first humans came to the southern end of the peninsula 14,000 years ago. When the first Europeans arrived, nomadic groups of Pericú, who survived on a subsistence diet based on the gathering of fruit, seeds, roots, and shellfish, as well as hunting and fishing. They lived a Neolithic lifestyle, without metals.
The first Europeans
Hernan Cortes, in 1535, and Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, in 1542, were the first Europeans to reach the coasts of Cabo San Lucas.
In March 1602 the Viceroy Count of Monterrey, Gaspar Zuñiga y Acevedo, appointed General Sebastián Vizcaíno to lead the exploration of coastal California in search of ports of refuge for the galleons of Manila.
From May 5 of that year to February 21 1603, Vizcaíno guided three ships, named the San Diego, the Santo Tomás, and the Tres Reyes. They sailed from the port of Acapulco north to the cape at Mendocino, California, in the company of the cosmographers Gerónimo Martí Palacios and the Carmelite monk Antonio de la Ascensión, who during the voyage named the places visited, made maps and prepared courses and journals describing the coast that would be used for the navigation of those places until the end of the 18th century.
Their maps of the California coastline are admirable for their precision and exacting detail; it was on that exploratory voyage that Cabo San Lucas was given its present name, dedicating it to Saint Luke.
The town's founding
Although humans have lived on the southern portion of the Baja California peninsula for thousands of years, including the region of Cabo San Lucas, it was not until the beginning of the 20th century that a fishing village began to develop in that area. In 1917, an American company built a floating platform to catch tuna, and ten years later founded the Compañia de Productos Marinos, S.A., which gave rise to the village.
The development boom
The warmth of the waters at Cabo San Lucas, the beauty of its beaches, the abundance of sport fish, and other qualities, motivated a great number of both foreign and Mexican vacationers to spend their vacations in large-scale tourist developments there, starting from 1974 when the Mexican government created the infrastructure to turn Cabo San Lucas into one of the most attractive centers for tourism in Mexico.
Tourism
- Cabo San Lucas has become an important vacation and spa destination, with a great variety of sites of interest, and timeshares that have been built on the coast between San Lucas and San José del Cabo.
- Cabo San Lucas has the largest Marlin tournament in the world, with a $1,000,000 jackpot. [1]
- Cabo San Lucas is a popular port of call for many cruise ships.
- In the winter, pods of whales can be observed in the ocean. They bear their calves in the warm waters there.
- The distinctive El Arco de Cabo San Lucas is a local landmark.
A little bit about the Golden Corridor
Cabo San Lucas raucous party atmosphere and San Jose’s laid-back colonial style are bridged by a golf course- and resort-studded Tourist Corridor that stretches between the twin towns in 20 miles of pristine white sand beaches and craggy coves.
Exclusive hotels and gated residential communities attracting a wide clientele of rich and famous weave seamlessly amid this wonderous landscape and comprise this region known as “the Corridor”. Many of these properties, which are considered some of Latin America’s top resorts, have become havens to Hollywood stars, Fortune 500 C.E.O.s and even the U.S. president during the 2002 Asian Pacific Economic Conference (APEC).
See also
- Baja California Sur
- La Paz, Baja California Sur
- Sebastián Vizcaíno
- Gulf of California
- Baja California Peninsula
- Mexican Federal Highway 1
- Mexican Federal Highway 19