The history of an area always leaves its indelible mark, but this is often missed if you do not know what you are looking for. Our family has grown to love learning the history of a place before we get there so we can poke around and find fascinating pieces of evidence of its past. RockyPoint-Mexico.com has a fascinating page of history on its site about how Puerto Penasco came to be. Not only does RockyPoint-Mexico.com make booking accommodations in the area super easy, they also have the best webpage of information on the area.
- Puerto Penasco, Mexicocam.riley / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND
Puerto Penasco, Mexico today is a thriving tourist beach destination. But it would not be that way if it were not for the Mexican/American war. After six years of negotiations on the land deals that created what is now the desert southwest of the US, the Mexican and American governments had not come to an agreement on the area now known as Rocky Point, a.k.a. Puerto Penaso, Mexico. The US wanted it as a seaport for Arizona. Mexico wanted it so its land mass was contiguous between Baja and the mainland. Eventually, Mexico prevailed and Arizona lost its hope of having beachfront property within its borders. It took another century for a permanent fresh water well to be drilled that would allow significant development. Get this – it was the mafia that initially saw the tourism potential of the area, drilled the well and built the first hotel. When a scuffle broke out between the local mafia boss and town government officials, the well and hotel were bombed into rubble. But the potential had been proven, and the hotel and well were soon rebuilt. Today, if you ask around town for the Bustamante brothers building erected in 1931, you’ll enjoy imagining what it must have been like in this sleepy fishing village almost a century ago.
RockyPoint-Mexico.com is the largest reservation service in Puerto Penasco. Check out the wide range of properties available – everything from villas to hotel rooms. But while you are on the site, don’t miss their page on the local history. It is captivating!
