William Walker, Imperial Self President of Baja 1853

William Walker Born: 8 May 1824
Died: 12 September 1860
Birthplace: Nashville, Tennessee

Best known as: 19th century filibuster who set up his own republic in Lower California. William Walker was an American filibuster who gained fame for his wild-eyed military exploits south of the United States border in the mid-19th century. By the time he was 25 years old, William Walker had worked as a physician in Pennsylvania, a lawyer in Louisiana and a journalist in California.

Taking the expansionist concept of Manifest Destiny to heart, Walker hired soldiers of fortune and between 1853 and 1860 made several attempts to take over territories in Mexico and Central America. He first invaded Lower California and declared it an independent republic; he then proclaimed the annexation of the nearby Mexican state of Sonora and dubbed it the Republic of Sonora, naming himself president in 1853.

Forced out by Mexican attacks in 1854, he surrendered to United States forces and was tried for violating neutrality laws, but was acquitted by a sympathetic jury.

Next he invaded Nicaragua and captured the city of Granada, where he set up a puppet government and named himself president in 1856. Run out by Costa Rican forces in 1857, Walker returned to the U.S. and was again acquitted of violating the law. He tried another invasion of Nicaragua a few months later, but was arrested again and sent back to the U.S. In 1860 he was arrested by the British in Honduras and turned over to Honduran authorities, who tried, convicted and executed him.

The First Encounter by CW Ferguson

Fortún Ximénez's Galeón Conceptión encounter Guaycra Indians of Baja

A terrifying wind had been blowing for days from the south. It was the season for winds and the Guaycura had prepared for it. They had gathered nuts and roots and cacti and had built low lying shelters to protect their offspring from the driving sheets of water that always accompanied the October storms. This year, though, the billowing black clouds seemed somehow more ominous; somehow more devastating than any in memory.

The winds abated on the morning of the fourth day, the driving rain ceased, and streaks of sunshine began to sparkle from the waters of the foaming sea. The Guaycura began to rouse themselves and move from their temporary encampment. Abruptly, there was a shrill whistle signal. And then another. The women grabbed fearfully for their children as the men snatched up their bows and sped headlong toward the bay.

Standing offshore, less than three arrow flights distance, stood a gigantic raft. Upon its decks could be seen a war party of strange beings. Many of them had tangled growths of hair on their faces and all had strange covering concealing their bodies. The Guaycura leader was surprised that the encroaching warriors carried no bows or arrows.

The chief glanced at the giant raft and quickly ordered his men from the beach into the cover of the arroyo. Two long canoes had been lowered from the giant raft and the strange intruders were climbing into them with the obvious intent of rowing to shore. An agitated murmur could be hard as the Guaycura warriors positioned themselves for battle.

As the Spanish seamen jumped gingerly ashore they fanned out along the littoral to commence their exploration. Many of them, the Guaycura noticed, carried long sticks; a form of some magic weaponry, perhaps.

One of the invaders shouted something unintelligible and gestured repeatedly toward the arroyo. The other seamen collapsed toward the shouting sailor in battle formation. Directly, there was an awesome thunderclap. The chief watched with dismay as one of his warriors rolled in agony on the ground and immediately ordered the attack.

Dozens of arrows filled the air now darkening from the smoke made by the thunder making sticks. One of the foreigners emitted a shriek, grabbed his throat and fell to the sandy beach. Another, with deep blue eyes, dropped his thunder stick and sagged to his knees. Two companions grabbed him by the arms and began dragging him toward the long canoes.

As the chief was about to release an arrow, one of his warriors shouldered him aside and fell moaning to the ground, half his face a bloody smear. The chief unloosed an arrow that was swift and true. A bearded giant crumpled to the sand. The raiders broke off from the encounter, hurrying now to return to their canoes. A long, warbling whistle signal was heard and the warriors and their arrows fell silent.

The Guaycura watched dispassionately as the two canoes drew alongside the great raft. The raft did not look very sea worthy. Its hull seemed battered in places and the enormous square skins that hung from the tall trees attached to the hull were tattered and torn. Atop one of the slender tree trunks fluttered a smaller skin that was colored yellow and red. The chief and his men discussed the painted skin and decided hat it probably represented the sign of a distant tribe from the south.

Note: Fortún Ximénez, survivors, and Galeón Conceptión raised sail for their return trip south to Huatulco. A few days later they put into Bahía Banderas near Puerto Vallarta and were killed by local Indians in 1533. In 1535, Hernán Cortés would return to La Paz with several hundred men, women and children. Shortly thereafter, the Guaycura would learn the significance of the yellow and red skins.

Myth of California & Queen Califia

Queel Califia

valiant and courageous and ardent with a brave heart,
Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián) is the fifth book in a series of novels on Spanish chivalry by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, which began with Amadís de Gaula. The first known edition of this work was published in Sevilla in July 1510, but there was undoubtedly one prior (perhaps published in Sevilla in 1496), since the sixth book of the series, Florisando, appeared in April 1510.
Las Sergas mentions an island named California, inhabited only by women. When Spanish explorers learned of an island (actually a peninsula) off western Mexico rumored to be ruled by Amazon women, they named it California.

Califia (aka Calafia) is the name of a legendary Black Amazon warrior queen, associated with the mythical Island of California. The U.S. state of California is thought by some to be named after Queen Califia.

The legend of Queen Califia appears to date back to the novel Las sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián), written around 1510 by the Spanish writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo

"It is known that to the right of the Indies there exists an island called California very near the terrestrial paradise; and peopled by black women among whom there was not a single man since they lived in the way of the Amazons. They had beautiful robust bodies, spirited courage and great strength. Their island was the most impregnable in the world with its cliffs and headlands and rocky coasts. Their weapons were all of gold. . . because in all the island there was no metal except gold. And there ruled over that island of California a queen of majestic proportions, more beautiful than all others, and in the very vigor of her womanhood. She was not petite, nor blond, nor golden-haired. She was large, and black as the ace of clubs. But the prejudice of color did not then exist even among the most brazen-faced or the most copper-headed. For, as you shall learn, she was reputed the most beautiful of women; and it was she, O Californias! who accomplished great deeds, she was valiant and courageous and ardent with a brave heart, and had ambitions to execute nobler actions than had been performed by any other ruler — Queen Califia."

This document helped to precipitate the Spanish hunt for gold in North America. In 1536 when the explorer Hernán Cortés landed with his crew in what is known today as Baja California, that they had arrived in Califia's land. A portion of the original of this document Las sergas de Esplandián was translated by Edward Everett Hale for The Antiquarian Society, and the story was printed in the Atlantic Monthly magazine in 1864.[By 1770, the entire Pacific coast controlled by Spain had been given the name California, and the Spanish speaking people who lived there were called Californios.

First European Set Foot on Baja 1533

Fortún Ximénez

was Spanish sailor who led a mutiny during an early expedition along the coast of Mexico and founded the first known European settlement in Baja California.
Ximénez was the pilot of a ship sent by Hernán Cortés in 1533 to travel north along the coast of New Spain from present-day Manzanillo, Colima, in search of two ships that had been lost without a trace on a similar voyage the previous year. The previous voyages had been in search of the mythical Strait of Anián and the Island of California, which according to a previously published romance novel in Spain, was supposedly a terrestrial paradise populated only by dark-skinned women. During the voyage, Ximénez lead a revolt in the which captain was killed. The mutineers then landed near present day La Paz, on the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula, which the mutineers believed to be the Island of California.
Ximénez was later killed by local Native Americans. The survivors returned to New Spain with the story of having discovered dark-skinned women and black pearls, which seemed to confirm the early legends of the Island of California.
The stories of the survivors prompted several follow-up expeditions by Cortés in the following years.

Most Famous Map Error in History 1510

Island of California 1510
The Island of California refers to a long-held European misconception, dating from the 16th century, that California was not part of mainland North America but rather a large island separated from the continent by the Gulf of California.
One of the most famous cartographic errors in history, it was propagated on many maps during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, despite contradictory evidence from various explorers. The legend was initially infused with the idea that California was a terrestrial paradise, like the Garden of Eden or Atlantis.

History
The first known mention of the legend of the "Island of California" was in the 1510 romance novel Las Sergas de Esplandián by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo — the sequel to Montalvo's more famous tales of Amadis de Gaula, father of Esplandian. He described the island in this passage:
Know, that on the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California very close to the side of the Terrestrial Paradise; and it is peopled by black women, without any man among them, for they live in the manner of Amazons
It is probable that this description prompted early explorers to misidentify the peninsula of Baja California as the island in these legends.
In 1533, Fortún Ximénez, a mutineer on an exploring expedition sent by Hernán Cortés, discovered the southern portion of Baja California, around La Paz. Cortés himself followed up on the discovery with an expedition to La Paz, but the settlement had to be abandoned soon afterwards. Cortés' limited information on southern Baja California apparently led to the naming of the region after the legendary California and to an initial but short-lived assumption that it was a large island.
In 1539, Cortés sent the navigator Francisco de Ulloa northward along the Gulf and Pacific coasts of Baja California. Ulloa reached the mouth of the Colorado River at the head of the Gulf, which seemed to prove that the region was a peninsula rather than an island. An expedition under Hernando de Alarcón ascended the lower Colorado River and confirmed Ulloa's finding. Maps published subsequently in Europe during the sixteenth century, including those by Gerardus Mercator and Abraham Ortelius, correctly showed California as a peninsula.
Despite this evidence, however, the depiction of California as an island revived in the early seventeenth century. One contributing factor may have been the fictitious exploits of Juan de Fuca in 1592. Fuca claimed to have explored the western coast of North America and to have found a large opening that possibly connected to the Atlantic Ocean — the legendary Northwest Passage.
A key role in changing ideas about California seems to have been played by an overland expedition led by the founding governor of New Mexico, Juan de Oñate. The expedition descended the Colorado River in 1604-1605, and its participants believed that they saw the Gulf of California continuing off to the northwest (presumably behind in the Sierra Cucapá into the Laguna Macuata Basin).
Reports from Oñate's expedition reached Antonio de la Ascención, a Carmelite friar who had participated in Sebastián Vizcaíno's explorations of the west coast of California in 1602-1603. Ascención was a tireless propagandist in favor of Spanish settlement in California, and his later writings referred to the region as an island.
The first known reappearance of the Island of California on a map dates to 1622 in a map by Michiel Colijn of Amsterdam. The image became the standard for many later maps throughout the seventeenth century and intermittently into the eighteenth century.
The Jesuit missionary and cartographer Eusebio Francisco Kino revived the idea that Baja California was a peninsula. While studying in Europe, Kino had accepted the insularity of California, but when he reached Mexico he began to have doubts. He made a series of overland expeditions from northern Sonora to areas within or near the Colorado River's delta in 1698-1706, in part to provide a practical route between the Jesuits' missions in Sonoran and Baja California but also to resolve the geographical question. Kino satisfied himself that a land connection must exist, and the eighteenth century Jesuits generally followed his example. However, Juan Mateo Manje, a military companion on several of Kino's treks, had his doubts, and European cartographers remained divided on the question.
Jesuit missionary-explorers in Baja California who attempted to lay the issue finally to rest included Juan de Ugarte (1721), Ferdinan Konščak (1746), and Wenceslaus Linck (1766). The matter was settled beyond all dispute when the expeditions of Juan Bautista de Anza traveled between Sonora and the west coast of California in 1774-1776.
Due to tectonic plate movement, in approximately 25 million years, Baja California and part of Southern California will separate from the mainland and continue drifting in a somewhat northward direction. This gradual movement (interspersed with occasional halts and earthquakes) will eventually serve to place Los Angeles north of San Francisco some fifty million years from today.The Island of California refers to a long-held European misconception, dating from the 16th century, that California was not part of mainland North America but rather a large island separated from the continent by the Gulf of California.
One of the most famous cartographic errors in history, it was propagated on many maps during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, despite contradictory evidence from various explorers. The legend was initially infused with the idea that California was a terrestrial paradise, like the Garden of Eden or Atlantis.

History
The first known mention of the legend of the "Island of California" was in the 1510 romance novel Las Sergas de Esplandián by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo — the sequel to Montalvo's more famous tales of Amadis de Gaula, father of Esplandian. He described the island in this passage:
Know, that on the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California very close to the side of the Terrestrial Paradise; and it is peopled by black women, without any man among them, for they live in the manner of Amazons
It is probable that this description prompted early explorers to misidentify the peninsula of Baja California as the island in these legends.
In 1533, Fortún Ximénez, a mutineer on an exploring expedition sent by Hernán Cortés, discovered the southern portion of Baja California, around La Paz. Cortés himself followed up on the discovery with an expedition to La Paz, but the settlement had to be abandoned soon afterwards. Cortés' limited information on southern Baja California apparently led to the naming of the region after the legendary California and to an initial but short-lived assumption that it was a large island.
In 1539, Cortés sent the navigator Francisco de Ulloa northward along the Gulf and Pacific coasts of Baja California. Ulloa reached the mouth of the Colorado River at the head of the Gulf, which seemed to prove that the region was a peninsula rather than an island. An expedition under Hernando de Alarcón ascended the lower Colorado River and confirmed Ulloa's finding. Maps published subsequently in Europe during the sixteenth century, including those by Gerardus Mercator and Abraham Ortelius, correctly showed California as a peninsula.
Despite this evidence, however, the depiction of California as an island revived in the early seventeenth century. One contributing factor may have been the fictitious exploits of Juan de Fuca in 1592. Fuca claimed to have explored the western coast of North America and to have found a large opening that possibly connected to the Atlantic Ocean — the legendary Northwest Passage.
A key role in changing ideas about California seems to have been played by an overland expedition led by the founding governor of New Mexico, Juan de Oñate. The expedition descended the Colorado River in 1604-1605, and its participants believed that they saw the Gulf of California continuing off to the northwest (presumably behind in the Sierra Cucapá into the Laguna Macuata Basin).
Reports from Oñate's expedition reached Antonio de la Ascención, a Carmelite friar who had participated in Sebastián Vizcaíno's explorations of the west coast of California in 1602-1603. Ascención was a tireless propagandist in favor of Spanish settlement in California, and his later writings referred to the region as an island.
The first known reappearance of the Island of California on a map dates to 1622 in a map by Michiel Colijn of Amsterdam. The image became the standard for many later maps throughout the seventeenth century and intermittently into the eighteenth century.
The Jesuit missionary and cartographer Eusebio Francisco Kino revived the idea that Baja California was a peninsula. While studying in Europe, Kino had accepted the insularity of California, but when he reached Mexico he began to have doubts. He made a series of overland expeditions from northern Sonora to areas within or near the Colorado River's delta in 1698-1706, in part to provide a practical route between the Jesuits' missions in Sonoran and Baja California but also to resolve the geographical question. Kino satisfied himself that a land connection must exist, and the eighteenth century Jesuits generally followed his example. However, Juan Mateo Manje, a military companion on several of Kino's treks, had his doubts, and European cartographers remained divided on the question.
Jesuit missionary-explorers in Baja California who attempted to lay the issue finally to rest included Juan de Ugarte (1721), Ferdinan Konščak (1746), and Wenceslaus Linck (1766). The matter was settled beyond all dispute when the expeditions of Juan Bautista de Anza traveled between Sonora and the west coast of California in 1774-1776.
Due to tectonic plate movement, in approximately 25 million years, Baja California and part of Southern California will separate from the mainland and continue drifting in a somewhat northward direction. This gradual movement (interspersed with occasional halts and earthquakes) will eventually serve to place Los Angeles north of San Francisco some fifty million years from today.

Brief History Baja - Discovery to Today

BAJA'S 457 YEARS OF SOMNAMBULENT HISTORY ‑ cwferguson

Reports filed by Fortun Ximénez with Hernán Cortez in 1533 were unbelievable. Ten sailing days north of Bahia de Tecuantepec, located in the south of New Spain, existed an island populated by aborigines tall in stature and dark of complexion. Every paragraph indicated that the new discovery was the lost island described by Garcí Ordóñez de Montalvo in his 1510 best selling novel, Sergas de Esplandían. If so, the land would be rich in gold and pearls and would be ruled by an Amazonian Queen named Califia. Corte'z was excited.
On the third day of May, 1535, Cortez, commanding three galleons, sailed into a beautiful, tranquil harbor, took possession in the name of the reigning Spanish monarch, King Charles I, and named it Santa Cruz. Beyond the beautiful bay, however, lay an arid, desolate desert "fit only for the savages existing there" and obviously not the fabled land of California.
Santa Cruz was abandoned in 1537 and would remain but a footnote in Spanish history until 1596 when Sebastia'n Vizcaíno attempted to establish a pearl fishing colony there. Although no more successful than his predecessor, Vizcaíno succeeded in charting the entirety of the Gulfo de California, which he called El Mar de Corte'z, and, in the process, renamed the peaceful bay La Paz. With Vizcaíno's abandonment of the colony, La Paz would slumber until 1720.
In the interim, however, Spain was suffering grave problems in her attempt to colonize the New World. By 1565, a route from Luzon in the Philippines to Acapulco in New Spain had been established and the Spaniards were transporting massive quantities of Oriental treasures aboard their invincible galleons. The annual shipment was known as the Manila Galeón. Harassment, however, stalked the horizon.
On the 16th of September, 1578, Francis Drake entered the Sea of the South through the Straits of Magellan with a quintet of warships. Spain trembled. Nine years later, during midday of the 11th of November, 1587, Thomas of Cavendish, commanding two corsairs, the Desire and the Content, sacked and burned the "invincible" Santa Ana off the coast of Cabo San Lucas. Spain spasmed. When Joris van Spilbergen entered Spanish waters in 1615 with his "Dutch Hens" Spain recognized that colonization of the Pacific littoral was an absolute necessity if continued expansion and maritime control was to be achieved. Due to the 30 Year's War and the debacle wreaked on the Spanish Armada in 1588 by the British, Spain's coffers were insufficiently provisioned to establish the presidios requisite to stem the swelling tide of foreign encroachment.
Consequently, the Crown authorized the Society of Jesus to colonize and "Christianize" the aborigines on the island they were now referring to as California. On October 5th, 1683, the Jesuits made their first foray into California under the direction of Father Eusebio Francisco Kino.
Although Father Juan Mari'a de Salvatierra founded the first permanent mission, Nuestra Se@ora de Loreto, on Christmas day, 1697, La Paz would wait 23 years before Fathers Juan de Ugarte and Jaime Bravo would found Mission Neustra Se@ora de Pilar de la Paz in 1720. Of course, by this time it was known that California was not an island. The Crown was delighted with the aspect of establishing missions from California north to Monterey in Alta California; its pleasure was to be short‑lived.

During the first week of October, 1734, Pericú warriors simultaneously attacked the missions at Todos Santos, La Paz, Santiago, and San Josse' del Cabo. Two priests, one soldier, and over 300 civilians perished before survivors were able to escape to Isla Espiritu Santo off La Paz. The Pericú uprisings of 1734‑36 was not the first of many setbacks that had confronted the Society of Jesus. The following year, 1735, 600 armed warriors attacked the galleon San Cristóbal while taking on water in San Jose' del Cabo. The Captain, Mateo Zumalde, weighed anchor with a minimum of casualties, but the Jesuit undertaking had, in effect, come to an end.
Citing illegal enrichment by the Jesuits as well as Indian maltreatment, King Charles III expelled the Society of Jesus from all Spanish territories in 1768. The missions at La Paz, Santiago, Santa Rosa, San Jose' del Cabo, and Todos Santos (the Southern Missions) would never recover. La Paz and Los Cabos (the capes) would slumber for well over a century.

As the 19th Century was dawning, México revolted against imperialism and foreign encroachment. Spain was turned out of México, ill equipped as she was to engage in the Mexican struggle due to European intrigues against her empire. When Hapsburg Archduke Maximilian was executed before a firing squad while attempting escape through Vera Cruz, French presence was forever vanquished from México. But a fledgling nation to the north, calling itself the United States of America, continued to interfere in Mexican affairs. None of the fomenting problems seemed to have any effect on California.
The Texas revolt against Mexican rule in 1835, however, would ultimately change the cartographical face of México and the destiny of the Baja peninsula. United States President James K. Polk precipitated a war with México in 1844 which resulted in a "vast Mexican Cession." Alta and Baja California was to be ceded to the United States, but an 11th hour decision, the details of which remain historically obscure, opted against the acquisition of the California peninsula.
Not everyone north of the Rio Bravo was pleased with the decision. Filibuster William Walker, advertising for mercenaries in the San Francisco Examiner, collected a motley expeditionary force and invaded México through Ensenada. As he was nearing La Paz, however, a brave and well equipped Mexican garrison repulsed his forces. That victory would mark the last foreign attempt at military intervention into Mexican territory.
But all was not well with México. Porfirio Diaz, a duly elected president, usurped the constitution and refused to leave office at the end of his legal term. The fever of the citizenry reached the flash point in 1910. But in 1910 the world was in upheaval. The War Between The States had recently been resolved as had the revolution in France. Conflict amongst Prussia, Austria and the German states was about to erupt into World War I. Russian intellectuals and their flock of serfs were on the revolutionary move just as Colonialism was inexorably declining. Alas, México would benefit least from her internal problems. And while the world attempted to resolve its multifaceted controversies no one seemed at all interested in the whereabouts of an isolated pueblo called La Paz.
For some, after 1950, war and rumors of war were replaced by rumors of unbelievable fishing in the Baja. La Paz and hotel Palmilla were the first to capitalize on the nouveaux riche fishermen. Bing Crosby, Desi Arnaz, and The Duke put Los Cabos on the map for the rich and the famous. Bud Parr acquired hotel Cabo San Lucas and went on to buy and expand hotel Hacienda. Luis Coppola built the Finisterra and Luis Bulnes countered with hotel Sol Mar. Los Cabos had awakened. The past five years have noted the trebling of populations in San Jose' and Cabo and has beheld a burgeoning growth in tourism as well . . . and it's only just beginning.

Mother Nature Forms the Baja Peninsula

Trekking Along The Cape Region

If you've ever tried to cut a thin slice of Gorgonzola to
spread on a fresh piece of French bread, then you have an animated
comparison as to how the Baja Peninsula was formed. It simply
cracked and crumbled away from the Atlantic plate on a line now
designated as the San Andreas fault. But that was only 5 or 6
million years ago.
The Baja Peninsula is a Johnny-come-lately in the annuals of
geography. The late Cenozoic period, some 25 million years ago,
recorded the birth of the San Andreas fault. The fault literally
split California apart from northwestern México. Everything west
of México began moving laterally northwest. Mountain building
increased along the San Andreas fault in the north while the
central mountains of Sierra San Francisco and Sierra de la Giganta
in the south emerged through volcanism. As the peninsula separated
from the mainland and moved north along the fault line it was
stretched and thinned.
Even as early as 15 million years ago, during the middle Miocene,
Baja California was still attached to mainland México much further
south and the Gulfo de California (Sea of Cortez) did not yet exist. The peninsula
lay mostly under the Pacific ocean with the exceptions of
northeastern Baja California, the Vizcaíno desert region including
Isla Cedros, and the Cape region.
But about 5 million years ago the continual movement along the
fault commenced to create the Gulf of California. As the basins
opened salt water poured in during that period and flooded as far
north as Palm Springs in California Alta.
By the time the San Andreas fault had awakened this sleeping
peninsular paradise from its millennia old snooze below the oceans
surface, Dinosaurs had been out of vogue for over 60 million years.
As the Gulfo de California( sea of Cortez) opened wider, the coastal plain that was
to become Baja California Norte tipped up like a large wedge of
birthday cake with its frosted edge elevated toward the east.
Rivers that once ran west into the Pacific now emptied eastwardly
into the Gulfo de California (Sea of Cortez).

Cataclysmic changes have occurred during the past 2 million
years. The peninsula has moved some 150 miles to the northwest
during this period, known as the Pleistocene, and has experienced
dramatic climatic changes. The ice ages that have dominated this
period have not deposited glaciers this far south, but it caused
the weather to be both cooler and wetter. Sea level was as low as
60 feet below what it is today and forested lake regions covered
much of northern México including the Baja Peninsula. During the
past 2 thousand years, since the passing of the last ice age, the
sea level has risen some 30 feet, desertification has caused lakes
to dry up, and land masses and mountains formerly attached to the
peninsula has become islands.
The last spectacular evidence that tectonic and seismic activity
continues on the peninsula was the 1746 eruption of the Tres
Vírgenes volcano, northwest of Santa Rosal¡a. The San Andreas,
Agua Blanca, and Cerro Prieto faults continue to be the source of
strong earthquake activity. The peninsula's northwesterly movement
is so measurable, an inch or more a year, that NASA sent a laser
equipped scientific team to Cabo San Lucas in 1988 to record a
triangulation between Mazaltan and, Cabo San Lucas, and Grass Valley,
California. Their finding have not yet been published, but its
unlikely that the Baja Peninsula will become a part of the southern
California coastline in the near future.

Nothing has changed much during the past five hundred years. The
azure waters surrounding the peninsula remain as poignantly blue
and glimmering as they have always been; the pristine beaches
remain white and soft; the craggy cliffs and bolder strewn
encroachments into the Sea of Cortez continue to attest to
cataclysmic forces that gave birth to this uniquely picturesque
desert-seascape during its creation; and the sheltered
coves and natural bays continue to offer sanctuary and respite to
the seafarer searching an escape from the tempestuous winds and
seas that infrequently harass these splendid coastal regions now
designated as Los Cabos.

What was it like then, before the coming of the sport fisher and
the airplane, to trek the twenty odd miles from San José‚ del Cabo
to Cabo San Lucas? What a delight it must have been for the Pericú
providers to tramp the unspoiled terrain for three or four suns on
his rendezvous with finisterra, land's end, where the cold waters
of the not so pacific Pacific collide ferociously with the warm and
tranquil waters of the Mar de Cortez.

Today, Los Cabos is seemingly only a few steps away from becoming
a 21st Century tourist center with modern hotels, instant
communication with the real world, a plethora of fine
restaurants offering cross cultural cuisines, world class fishing,
easy access from the United States and Canada, and a four lane
highway from the Los Cabos International Airport to the door step
of the hotel, home, or condominium of one's choice.

The highway closely follows the path taken by the first
aboriginal explorer who lived so freely and graciously here those
many, many years ago.

There is harshness and brutality at the cape just as there is a
hushed quietude during a moon illumined night, a serenity following
a storm, and a lingering sensuality from its ocean breezes. Cabo
is many things to many people and everything to a few.