Qualla: Todos Santos, Baja California Sur

Todos Santos, Baja California Sur: Introduction

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Schediwy, CC BY-SA 4.0. The spring dried up in 1950, and Todos Santos began to die. By 1965, the last of eight sugar mills that had once made this Pacific coast town the sugarcane capital of Baja California had closed its doors. For three decades, there was little reason to come here and fewer reasons to stay. Then, in 1981, the water came back. The spring simply resumed flowing, as if the land had been holding its breath. A few years later the Mexican government paved Highway 19, connecting the town to Cabo San Lucas an hour to the south, and everything changed. Sitting right on the Tropic of Cancer in the foothills of the Sierra de la Laguna Mountains, Todos Santos -- "All Saints" -- has been reinventing itself ever since.

Image: Robert Schediwy | CC BY-SA 4.0

Todos Santos, Baja California Sur: Before the Saints Arrived

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sharon Hahn Darlin, CC BY 2.0. The Guaycura people knew this land for centuries before any European mapped it. They were nomadic hunter-gatherers whose territory stretched north to what is now Loreto. In the early 1720s, Jesuit priest Jaime Bravo established a subsidiary mission post here, drawn by something r...

Image: Sharon Hahn Darlin | CC BY 2.0

Todos Santos, Baja California Sur: Sugar, Then Silence

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ana Rodríguez Carrington from Baja California Sur, Mexico, CC BY 2.0. After the missions were secularized in the 19th century, Todos Santos found its economic footing in sugarcane. Eight mills operated at the height of the boom, their machinery grinding through the harvest season, the sweet smell of processing hanging over the valley. The industry ...

Image: Ana Rodríguez Carrington from Baja California Sur, Mexico | CC BY 2.0

Todos Santos, Baja California Sur: The Hotel California Question

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sharon Hahn Darlin, CC BY 2.0. When tourists began arriving in the mid-1980s, they found the Hotel California. The name was irresistible, conjuring the Eagles' 1977 hit, and the hotel leaned into the association. There was just one problem: the song was never about this hotel, or any real hotel at all. In 2017...

Image: Sharon Hahn Darlin | CC BY 2.0

Todos Santos, Baja California Sur: Growing Pains at the Tropic of Cancer

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dick Culbert from Gibsons, B.C., Canada, CC BY 2.0. Success has brought its own threats. The Todos Santos aquifer -- the town's only water source -- faces over-extraction, saltwater intrusion, and invasion by arundo, a non-native grass that consumes groundwater at alarming rates. The city's water distribution system is overtaxed, ...

Image: Dick Culbert from Gibsons, B.C., Canada | CC BY 2.0