Baja California Peninsula historical timeline

Baja’s history is one of extreme isolation, and of a population almost entirely replaced by disease.

The painters

The Great Murals of the Sierra de San Francisco were painted over a long period ending perhaps a thousand years ago, by people about whom almost nothing is known. The figures are life-size or larger, in red and black, and include whales, deer and human forms pierced by arrows. By the time the Jesuits asked, the local Cochimi said the paintings had been made by a race of giants from the north.

The missions

The Spanish found Baja forbidding and failed repeatedly to settle it. The Jesuits succeeded from 1697, founding Loreto and then a chain of missions down the peninsula, sustaining them by boat from the mainland. The consequence for the indigenous population was catastrophic: smallpox, measles and syphilis reduced perhaps fifty thousand people to a few thousand within a century, and the Cochimi disappeared entirely as a people.

Division and war

The Jesuits were expelled in 1768 and the Franciscans moved north into Alta California. The Mexican-American War ended in 1848 with Alta California ceded to the United States and Baja retained — a decision that could easily have gone the other way. The American filibuster William Walker declared himself president of a Republic of Lower California in 1853 and was driven out within months.

Prohibition and the road

American prohibition made Tijuana and Ensenada boom towns in the 1920s. The Transpeninsular Highway was completed in 1973, connecting the peninsula by road for the first time, and Los Cabos was developed as a resort destination from the 1980s.