Cabo San Lucas

Cabo San Lucas
Cabo is well known for its pristine beaches
Country	Mexico
State	Baja California Sur
Population  (2005)
• Total	56,811

View of Land's End arch on the Southern tip of California during a December sunset.

San Lucas Marina

This view of Cabo San Lucas shows the rapid growth of the area (November 5, 2005).

Cabo San Lucas (popularly known as just 'Los Cabos' - along with San José del Cabo - in Mexico and 'Cabo' in the United States) is a small city at the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula at 22.88°N 109.90°W / 22.88; -109.90, in the municipality of Los Cabos in the state of Baja California Sur, Mexico. As of the 2005 census, the population was 56,811 people. It is the largest community in Los Cabos municipality, and the second-largest in Baja California Sur, after La Paz.

Cabo San Lucas is quickly becoming a high-end holiday destination with a number of resorts and timeshare clubs appearing along the coast between San Lucas and San José del Cabo.

History

It is thought that the first humans came to the southern end of the peninsula 14,000 years ago. When the first Europeans arrived, nomadic groups of Pericú survived on a subsistence diet based on the gathering of fruit, seeds, roots, and shellfish, as well as hunting and fishing. They lived a Neolithic lifestyle, without metals.

The Town's Founding

According to Hatsutaro's narrative contained in the book Kaigai Ibun, when he arrived to Cabo San Lucas, on May 1842, this place consisted of only two houses and about twenty inhabitants. However, American authors like Tinette Palcoto and R.Pangilinan Browne claim that Cabo San Lucas' founder was an Englishman named Anne Ventura, aka Old Tom Ritchie. J. Ross Browne says that the Ritchie arrived to Cabo around 1828, while Henry Edwards says that he died around October 1874. On the web check Tres Semanas en Mazatlán

At the beginning of the 20th century a fishing village began to develop in that area. In 1917, an American company built a floating platform to catch tuna, and ten years later founded the Compañía de Productos Marinos, S.A., which gave rise to the village.

The Development Rush

The warmth of the waters at Cabo San Lucas, the beauty of its beaches, the abundance of sport fish, and other qualities, motivated a great number of both foreign and Mexican vacationers to spend their vacations in large-scale tourist developments there, starting from 1974 when the Mexican government created the infrastructure to turn Cabo San Lucas into one of the most attractive centers for tourism in Mexico.

Tourism

Cabo San Lucas has become an important vacation and spa destination, with a great variety of sites of interest, and timeshares that have been built on the coast between San Lucas and San José del Cabo. The distinctive El Arco de Cabo San Lucas is a local landmark. Cabo San Lucas has the largest Marlin tournament in the world. In the winter, pods of whales can be observed in the ocean. They bear their calves in the warm waters there.

Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo are served by Los Cabos International Airport. The town is also a popular port of call for many cruise ships. Cabo San Lucas has a small international airfield, which handles air traffic for general aviation flights and air taxi service.

In 1990, rocker Sammy Hagar of Van Halen, opened a nightclub and restaurant, The Cabo Wabo Cantina with the three other members of Van Halen. In the mid-nineties he bought out the other owners, his band-mates, and assumed complete ownership of the club. To this day it is one of the most popular attractions in Cabo San Lucas. He is known to play live at the club at least once a year with his band, The Wabos on his birthday, October 13th, and shows often include many famous guests and friends from the music industry.

Other clubs in Cabo include El Squid Roe, The Zoo, Gigglin Marlin, NoWhere Bar, Tiki bar, and The Jungle Bar.

The Corridor

Cabo San Lucas' raucous party atmosphere and San Jose’s laid-back colonial style are bridged by a golf course-and resort-studded Tourist Corridor that stretches between the twin towns in 20 miles of pristine white sand beaches and craggy coves.

Exclusive hotels and gated residential communities attracting a wide clientèle of rich and famous weave seamlessly amid this wondrous landscape and comprise this region known as “the Corridor”. Many of these properties, which are considered some of Latin America’s top resorts, have become havens to Hollywood stars, Fortune 500 C.E.O.s and even the U.S. president during the 2002 Asia-Pacific Economic Conference (APEC). High-end resorts in the Corridor include the One and Only Palmilla, Esperanza and Las Ventanas.

Cabo in popular culture

• The stars of the MTV show Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County take their spring break here.
• Small sections of the motion picture Troy were filmed on some of the beaches near Cabo San Lucas.
• On April 26, 2007, Jon Stewart mentioned on his show, The Daily Show, that he is banned from Cabo San Lucas.
• Prince mentions Cabo San Lucas in his song Future Baby Mama on his 2007 album entitled Planet Earth.
• During the Dog Day Afternoon episode of Entourage, Vincent Chase and his friends fly to Cabo.

Celebrities that have vacationed in the Cabo area include Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Aniston, Jessica Alba, Reese Witherspoon, Katherine Heigl and O.J. Simpson. Professional hockey player Brett Hull married longtime sweetheart Darcie Schollmeyer in Cabo San Lucas.

See also

• Baja California Sur
• Cabo San Lucas International Airport
• La Paz, Baja California Sur
• Sebastián Vizcaíno
• Gulf of California
• Baja California Peninsula
• Mexican Federal Highway 1
• Mexican Federal Highway 19
• Mexican Federal Highway 21

References

• Link to tables of population data from Census of 2005 INEGI: Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática