HISTORY OF PUERTO VALLARTA - PART II

Whilst there are various versions of how Las Peñas came to be, everyone can agree that Guillermo Sánchez Torres was the founder of the up and coming town.

1859 saw an important turning point for the small village, then known as Las Peñas. That year the Union en Cuale mining company took possession of land extending from Los Arcosto the Pitillal river and extending back up into the Sierra Madre Mountains for miles. The Union en Cuale Company was owned in part by the Camarena brothers of Guadalajara who had developed a small trade in oil palm in Las Peñas. The purpose of the government's sale of the land to the company was to provide for shipping, fishing and agricultural support for the mining operations, which were growing quite quickly in the Sierra.

The official founding story of Las Peñas and thus of Puerto Vallarta is that it was founded by Guadalupe Sánchez Torres, on December 12, 1851, as Las Peñas de Santa María de Guadalupe. Unfortunately the record of Sanchez's purchase of property in Las Peñas dates the sale to 1859. Another thing to consider is that the area was already peopled by fisherman, pearl divers, smugglers and foragers, as early as 1850, all of whom had something of a permanent existence in the area. Given the existing historical documents it is simply impossible to date the first permanent settlement in the area,

There is however no doubt the development of Las Peñas into a self-sustaining village of any significant size happened in the 1860s as the mouth of the Cuale area was exploited to support the operations of the newly enfranchised Union en Cuale company. As such, 1859 marks the beginning of Puerto Vallarta as a village. Twenty years later, by 1885, the village comprised about 250 homes and about 800 residents.

To be Continued in Part III

You can read the first part of this article: History of Puerto Vallarta - Part I