Sayulita

History

The name is a diminutive of Sayula, Jalisco. It was given by Lauro González Guerra in honor of his hometown, whose name comes from a Nahuatl word for a place with many flies.

Early Sayulita was a handful of palm huts lit by oil lamps, home to about 40 people. They and their neighbors from nearby ranches worked for the Jaltemba hacienda, gathering the nuts of the cohune palm and cracking them with stones to extract oil. The dust was hard on the lungs and many workers died of respiratory illness. Every week a ship called the Salvatierra loaded the oil at Sayulita's small port. The hacienda later grew into a large cattle operation under the Camarena family.

In 1936 the land passed to the workers and the Sayulita ejido was formed. Coconut oil production dropped sharply in the 1940s, and people turned to farming and fishing. The highway between Las Varas and Puerto Vallarta, built in 1965, brought the first tourists, and a government development project soon added cobbled streets, a plaza, a kiosk and a market. Sayulita was named a Pueblo Mágico in 2015.