Cultural Tours for Puerto Vallarta, take you to outlying villages and small towns, on the coast and up into the Sierra Madre mountains. Enjoy theses small towns with their unique histories and markets.
Many of these towns and villages predate Puerto Vallarta and were established in Colonial times. Many, if they didn’t have silver mines, where established to supply the mining towns like San Sebastian.
San Sebastian
Like Puerto Vallarta itself which was established to supply the mining towns with salt, to be used in the refining process.
In 1851, one Don Guadalupe Sanchez Torres, a trader, started to bring in salt by sea from the area around San Blas, to supply the gold and silver mining towns in the mountains behind the bay, where it was used in the refining process. These towns, such as Cuale and San Sebastian sent their precious bullion by land to the East Coast for shipping to Spain, which was much safer and easier than by sea, so don’t believe all those exciting descriptions of Puerto Vallarta loading silver bars onto ships in the bay, it never happened.
In 1851 Don Guadalupe established a settlement, at the mouth of the Rio Cuale, with his extended family and named it Las Peñas de Santa Maria de Guadalupe.
The small settlement expanded with workers from the mining towns, when production slowed at the mines, (mostly because of the price going down with discovery in Nevada) they turned their hand to agriculture, cattle and fishing.
More Local History Here. See our map of the area, Here.
