Todos Santos

History

Nomadic Guaycura people used the oasis for water and gathered shellfish on the coast long before Europeans arrived. The Jesuit Jaime Bravo came upon it in the 1720s and in 1723 set up a visiting station here, which supplied water, fruit and vegetables to the mission at La Paz. In 1733 Segismundo Taraval raised it to a full mission, Santa Rosa de las Palmas. The Pericú rebellion destroyed it the following year, and although it was rebuilt, epidemics in the 1740s devastated the native population. When the La Paz mission was abandoned in 1749, its people were moved here.

After the Jesuits were expelled in 1768, Franciscans and then Dominicans took charge, and the mission was finally abandoned in 1840. Church lands were redistributed in 1842, and Todos Santos entered its most prosperous period as a sugarcane town with as many as eight mills, colonial-style buildings and two theaters.

The spring dried up in 1950 and the last mill closed in 1965. The water returned in 1981, the highway was paved a few years later, and farming, fishing, artists and visitors brought the town back to life.