Ahoy, Red Rock!: —American Mining Investors in Cedros Island, Baja California
- Ahoy, Red Rock!—American Mining Investors in Cedros Island, Baja California
The islands of Baja California had a compelling role in the developing economy of the Southwest of the United States predominantly in the last decade of the nineteenth century and at the turn of the twentieth century, because the Mexican government could not surveil its own maritime space in the northwest part of the country and this resulted in American ventures that exploited its natural resources that went unsanctioned the vast majority of the time. In regarding the ore deposits, Cedros Island was heavily sought out by different American companies due to its large mineral veins that needed to be exploited legally, as a result of large investments they had to spend to make it work.
In this article, I present my ongoing research regarding the American companies that operated in Cedros Island between 1889 and 1914; the question posed is what led them to invest in a desolate island of Baja California and if there were significant implications in this binational region regarding the mining activities carried out on the island. The importance of this study is to understand why the resources that were exploited and trafficked were of interest mostly to the Southern California economy, and its connections to the mining sectors of the Southwest of the United States.
Likewise, the importance of this story is to shed light on mining activities carried out in Baja California that, although local scholars have approached it in the mainland mining districts of the region, they have failed to study it on the islands adjacent to the peninsula; the ore deposits found in Cedros Island comprise one of those cases. [End Page 1]
The Region's Historical Background
The emergence of the mining activity in Baja California was developed mainly by the establishment and growth of the maritime ports of the region, primarily the one in Ensenada de Todos Santos, and Baja's intense mining relationship with the state of California. Maritime transport played a key role in the development of Ensenada de Todos Santos and in 1877, the political chief and commander of the territory, Andrés L. Tapia, opened the port to trade, christening it Puerto México, and installed a customs office for the basic work of collecting duties.1
But although Tapia opened and recognized the port of Ensenada (as Puerto México) in 1877, the Mexican government approved it on October 26, 1880, when the opening of the port was confirmed by an official decree and the name of Puerto México was dropped. Once it was opened to trade, the importance of goods that arrived and left the port was the main argument for the request to change the capital of the northern territory of Baja California, located in the mining town of Real del Castillo at that time, to Ensenada. From 1882 to 1915, due to the growth of maritime traffic within its geographical space, Ensenada was the capital of the territory because it was the easiest route of immediate communication between the inhabitants of the region with both California and the rest of the nation.
Finally, when the port of Ensenada de Todos Santos was established as the closest to the United States in the Pacific, the comparative advantage reduced costs, both of accounting and political transactions, as well as those provided for different vessels that arrived at the port. The medium-term result was increased international trade volume; greater ease of export and import of all kinds of goods, resources, and raw materials; as well as a strategic point that functioned as a node or center for the formation of a future hinterland.
In 1886, four years after the capital had changed to Ensenada due to its port activities, a steam trade route was established with weekly journeys between the Mexican port and the port of San Diego in California. This dynamic favored the inhabitants of Ensenada who were able to trade and know the events that took place in both nations through publications or firsthand when they moved aboard the boats that functioned as cargo ships and as transports for...
