At least, that’s what their little mining cart says, over there on the right:
Santa Rosalia sits on the east coast of the Baja California peninsula, about halfway up (or down, depending on your direction of travel) the Sea of Cortez. It was a small town made bigger in the late 19th/early 20th century by Boleo, a French mining company that saw copper in them thar hills. Boleo dug mines all over the place and Santa Rosalia sat right in the middle, where Boleo located the foundry and built a breakwater from the slag and rubble to shelter the sailing freighters that came with supplies and left with ore and refined copper. The French “haves” built houses for their people on a mesa with great views of the harbor – houses made out of wood imported from the Pacific Northwest. The Mexican “have nots” took the presumably less desirable real estate a bit to the south of the town centro. They say a couple thousand Mexican miners died here during the years the mines were active, most either from accidents or silicosis. We saw that the town’s cemeteries were located along high ridge lines like this view to the southwest of the town center, which left me thinking that maybe in the hereafter the miners wanted to be as close as possible to fresh air and sunlight.
Following, are a couple of views inside and outside the former Boleo headquarters up on “French Mesa“, now used as the town’s historical museum:
Wooden houses are quite rare in the hot, arid Baja – and with all the wooden houses that still stand in Santa Rosalia, it’s interesting to walk around downtown and pass fire hydrants on practically every street corner:
The mines eventually closed as the ore played out but they may soon be revived as new technology makes what copper ore is left, more extractible. Meanwhile the small-boat fishing fleet has tried to stay viable, and Santa Rosalia has tried to develop a bit of a tourist trade. Downtown Santa Rosalia distinguishes itself with its bakery that serves excellent French-style bread; a streetside purveyor of fine bacon-wrapped hot dogs; and its Iglesia Santa Barbara, a modular metal church designed by Gustave Eiffel (that’s right, the Tower guy). You might feel a metal church that’s reminiscent of a square-sided Quonset hut isn’t all that swell, unless you recall that Eiffel pulled this off in the 1880s – and it’s still being used every day by the people of Santa Rosalia. What have you built lately that will be used by the public in another 125 years, hm?
On the waterfront, the ruins of the foundry include old electric lights, which seemed pretty high-tech for the late 19th century and were of course designed with that period's artistic flair. Follow the line of these old poles with your eye as you stand on the waterfront, and you may see what might have once been the old waterfront road before it became part of Transpeninsular Highway 1.
Where other places like Mazatlan and La Paz decorate their public areas with bronze art sculptures, Santa Rosalia keeps its mining history alive by displaying defunct mining equipment as public art – a pretty classy move. For example, here’s a large bronze retort for smelting copper ore, on display along the harbor walk:
Some views of trains and cranes on various street corners:
And over here is a view of the old foundry ruins themselves:
You’d think that a town that is essentially in the middle of a giant mine, would be dusty. And you’d be right. Boy, howdy – Santa Rosalia is a town that should not be missed on any trip by land or by sea, but be prepared to clean a lot of dust out of your chosen mode of transportation. Especially if the wind blows.
The smallish harbor has a fuel dock and a brand-new Fonatur/Singlar marina just inside the breakwater to port; and further back toward the foundry ruins is the old 15-slip Marina Santa Rosalia with its shaky little finger piers that bounce with every panga’s wake. We stayed at Marina Santa Rosalia on the pier closest to the darsena where the pangas tied up, so we were right in the thick of the action. The pangueros are switching from the more traditional fishing to the newer trade of squid fishing. They say squid are plentiful in this part of the Sea of Cortez; at night we looked out a few miles past the breakwater and there were the lights of so many squid pangas, they looked like the distant shoreline of a small city. Santa Rosalia is beginning to promote itself as the Squid Capital of the Sea of Cortez and when we arrived in late April their 2-day SquidFest was in full swing on the public pier. Music! T-shirts! Squid cuisine! Beauty queens! Santa Rosalia knows how to party. We also hope that the pangueros of Santa Rosalia show the rest of Baja how to revive their fishing fleets with new approaches. Santa Rosalia will not give up. See it for yourself!
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