San Juan del Sur History

Pre-Columbian Nicaragua

By the end of the 15th century, western Nicaragua was inhabited by several indigenous peoples related by culture to the Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Aztec and Maya.

In the west and highland areas, occupying the territory between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific Coast, the Niquirano were governed by chief Nicarao, or Nicaragua. The wealthy ruler lived in Nicaraocali, site of the present-day city of Rivas. The Chorotega lived in the central region of Nicaragua.

Without women in their parties, the Spanish conquerors took Niquirano and Chorotega wives and partners, beginning the multi-ethnic mix of native and European stock now known as mestizo, which constitutes the great majority of population in western Nicaragua.

Within three decades after European contact, what had been an estimated Indian population of one million plummeted. Scientists and historians estimate approximately half of the indigenous people in western Nicaragua died from the rapid spread of new infectious diseases carried by the Spaniards, such as smallpox and measles, to which the Indians had no immunity.

Spanish Conquest

In 1502, Christopher Columbus was the first European known to have reached what is now Nicaragua as he sailed southeast toward the Isthmus of Panama. On his fourth voyage, Columbus explored the Misquitos Coast on the Atlantic side of Nicaragua. The first attempt to conquer what is now known as Nicaragua was by Gil Gonzalez Davila, who arrived in Panama in January 1520.

Gonzalez claimed to have converted some 30,000 indigenous peoples and discovered a possible transisthmian water link. After exploring and gathering gold in the fertile western valleys, Gonzalez was attacked by the indigenous people, some of whom were commanded by Nicarao and an estimated 3,000 led by chief Diriangen. Gonzalez later returned to Panama where Governor Pedro Arias Davila tried to arrest him and confiscate his treasure, some 90,000 pesos of gold. Gonzalez escaped to Santo Domingo.

It was not until 1524 that the first Spanish permanent settlements were founded. Conquistador Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba founded two of Nicaragua's principal towns in 1524: Granada on Lake Nicaragua was the first settlement, followed by Leon at a location east of Lake Managua. Cordoba was later publicly beheaded following a power struggle with Pedro Arias Davila.

Land was parceled out to the conquistadors, who were most interested in the western portion. They enslaved many indigenous people as labor to develop and maintain estates there. Others were put to work in mines in northern Nicaragua, some were killed in warfare. The great majority were sold as slaves, whipped, and shipped to other Spanish colonies in the New World, at a significant profit to the newly landed aristocracy. Many of the indigenous people died as a result of infectious disease, compounded by neglect by the Spaniards, who controlled their subsistence.

Cornelius Vanderbilt and the Accessory Transit Company

From the era of the conquistadors until the middle of the 19th century, San Juan del Sur remained a simple fishing village; the nearby town of Rivas was the most important town in the province. But the California Gold Rush transformed San Juan del Sur into a bustling port--for a period of 16 years.

When the California gold rush began in 1849, Cornelius Vanderbilt switched from regional steamboat lines to ocean-going steamships. Many of the migrants to California, and almost all of the gold returning to the East Coast, went by steamship to Panama, where mule trains and canoes provided transportation across the isthmus. (The Panama Railroad was soon built to provide a faster crossing.)

Vanderbilt proposed a canal across Nicaragua, which was closer to the United States and was spanned most of the way across by Lake Nicaragua and the San Juan River.

In the end, he could not attract enough investment to build the canal, but he did start a steamship line to Nicaragua, and founded the Accessory Transit Company to carry passengers across Nicaragua by steamboat on the lake and river; a stagecoach then crossed the narrow isthmus from Virgin Bay on Lake Nicaragua to San Juan del Sur, where another steamer traveled to San Francisco.

The ATC provided the cheapest route to California from the east coast, and was soon carrying 2,000 passengers a month at a fare of $300 each, later reduced to $150.

During its 16 years of activity, Accessory Transit moved 75, 079 travelers from New York to San Francisco and vice versa.

Cornelius Vanderbilt

William Walker the Filibuster

William Walker was a US lawyer, journalist and adventurer, who organized several private military expeditions into Latin America, with the intention of establishing English-speaking colonies under his personal control, an enterprise then known as "filibustering."

Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Walker graduated summa cum laude from the University of Nashville at the age of fourteen. He spent the next two years in Europe, studying medicine at the universities of Edinburgh, Heidelberg, Gottingen and Paris. The revolutions of 1848 took place during his stay in Europe; the political minds of the time, which include Garibaldi, Marx, Mazzini, Feuerbach, and Blanc, influenced his filibustering aspirations.

At the age of 19, he received a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania and practiced briefly in Philadelphia before moving to New Orleans to study law. He practiced law for a short time, but quit to become co-owner and editor of the New Orleans Crescent. In 1849, he moved to San Francisco, California, where he was a journalist. Walker now conceived the idea of conquering vast regions of Latin America, where he would create new slave states to join the federal union.

After a failed attempt to establish a colony in Baja California, Walker set his sights on Nicaragua. In 1854, a civil war erupted in Nicaragua between the Conservative party, based in the city of Granada, and the Liberal party, based in Leon. The Democratic party sought military support from Walker who, to circumvent U.S. neutrality laws, obtained a contract from Democratic president Francisco Castellon to bring as many as three hundred "colonists" to Nicaragua. These mercenaries received the right to bear arms in the service of the Democratic government. Walker sailed from San Francisco on May 3, 1855, with approximately 60 men. Upon landing in San Juan del Sur, the force was reinforced by 170 locals and about 100 Americans.

With Castellon's consent, Walker attacked the Conservatives in the town of Rivas, near the trans-isthmian route. He was driven off, but not without inflicting heavy casualties. On September 4, during the Battle of La Virgen, Walker defeated the Conservative army. On October 13, he conquered the Conservative capital of Granada and took effective control of the country. Initially, as commander of the army, Walker ruled Nicaragua through puppet President Patricio Rivas. U.S. President Franklin Pierce recognized Walker's regime as the legitimate government of Nicaragua on May 20, 1856.

Walker took up residence in Granada and set himself up as President of Nicaragua, after conducting a fraudulent election. He was inaugurated on July 12, 1856, and soon launched an Americanization program, reinstating slavery, declaring English an official language and reorganizing currency and fiscal policy to encourage immigration from the United States. Realizing that his position was becoming precarious, he sought support from the Southerners in the U.S. by recasting his campaign as a fight to spread the institution of black slavery, which many American Southern businessmen saw as the basis of their agrarian economy. With this in mind, Walker revoked Nicaragua's emancipation edict of 1824.

This move did increase Walker's popularity in the South and attracted the attention of Pierre Soule, an influential New Orleans politician, who campaigned to raise support for Walker's war. Nevertheless, Walker's army, weakened by an epidemic of cholera and massive defections, was no match for the Central American coalition. On December 14, 1856 as Granada was surrounded by 4,000 Salvadoran and Guatemalan troops, Charles Frederick Henningsen, one of Walker's generals, ordered his men to set the city ablaze before escaping and fighting their way to Lake Nicaragua. An inscription on a lance reading Aqui fue Granada ("Here was Granada") was left behind at the smoking ruin of the ancient capital city.

On May 1, 1857, Walker surrendered to Commander Charles Henry Davis of the United States Navy under the pressure of the Central American armies, and was repatriated to New York. Following an aborted coup in the Bay Islands of Honduras, he was shot by firing squad on September 12, 1860, at the age of 36.

William Walker

Mark Twain's Visit to San Juan del Sur

In December, 1866, Samuel Clemens, writing under his pen name Mark Twain, booked passage on a ship that took him from San Francisco to New York. After two weeks at sea, the ship approached San Juan del Sur. Upon seeing the shoreline, Twain wrote that Nicaragua's "bright green hills never looked so welcome, so enchanting, so altogether lovely."

Yet he described the town of San Juan del Sur as "a few tumble-down frame shanties--they call them hotels--nestling among green verdure and overshadowed by picturesque little hills."

The following day, he and his fellow passengers were loaded onto wagons bound for Lake Nicaragua, 12 miles east. The wagons, he wrote, were nothing but "faded red ambulances" with "four little sore-backed rabbits hitched to it." The trip from San Juan del Sur to the Virgin Crossing on Lake Nicaragua took three and a half hours.

From there, they met another steamer, which ferried them across the lake to a stern-wheeler destined for the Caribbean.

Mark Twain, in 1867

San Juan del Sur in the 20th Century

From the 1940s until the late 1990s, San Juan del Sur was one of Nicaragua's most important commercial ports. Wood, cattle, and other agricultural products were exported, and goods ranging from automobiles to farm equipment were brought into the country.

Since the late 1990s, tourism and foreign investment in real estate have become the largest largest economic activities in San Juan del Sur. Tax revenues from tourism and real estate development have enabled the mayor of San Juan del Sur to make improvements to public areas, including the park, sports center and beach front.

Cruise tourism has brought between 12,000 to 32,000 visitors to San Juan del Sur each year for the past 15 years.

In October of 2002, the port of San Juan del Sur celebrated its 150th anniversary as a city.