GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION AND HISTORY:

The Port of San Juan del Sur, is located in the bay with the same name, on the Pacific coast at the southern tip of our country, at 140 kilometers from the city of Managua and  28 kilometers from the city of Rivas.  Its exact geographic coordinates are: latitude 11º 15' 00” North and Longitude 85º 53' 00”  West.  It is a port that provides its services to both passengers and cargo, formed by a small bay whose entrance has a width of 0,4 Miles measured from the North cliff to the South. To the South it is surrounded by small and larger mountainous elevations in the form of a horseshoe that provide natural protection to the port from winds from the North, East and South.

LIMITS OF THE MUNICIPALITY:

• to the north: Municipality of Tola and Rivas.
• to the south: Costa Rica and the Pacific Ocean.
• to the east: the Pacific Ocean.
• to the west: Municipality of Rivas and Cárdenas.

San Juan del Sur was discovered by the Spanish pilot Andrés Niño in the summer of 1522, the origin of the name of San Juan del Sur dates back to the location of this port in the Pacific Ocean or “Mar del Sur” (Sea of the South) as it was called by the Spaniards, to distinguish it from San Juan del Norte, another Spanish Port of the Atlantic Ocean.
The port has been the protagonist of important events in the history of Nicaragua, it was a major commercial port from the mid nineteenth century with the Transit Route until the second half of the twentieth century when it had its golden age due to its importance on the Pacific Coast of Nicaragua.

San Juan del Sur was given a temporary status of “Nicaraguan Port” by a decree of the Constituent Congress of the Central American Federation in 1827; in 1830 it was qualified definitively as a seaport by an Executive decree on February 8  of  the same year and it was named “Puerto de la Independencia”.

Later the port was known like “San Juan de la Concordia” and it was registered later with this name in the “Daily Civil Registry” of November 2 of 1846.
Also in 1846, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, taking advantage of the Gold fever that raged in California, established the Transit Route to ensure communication between the East and West coast of the United States and thus avoid the dangers that travelers had to face making that journey over land. The passenger boats left New York and entered Nicaragua through the port of San Juan del Norte, navigated up the San Juan River and arrived at the lake port of La Virgen after crossing the lake of Nicaragua.
In 1851 the town was officially called San Juan del Sur and was mentioned with this name in a note of Don Fruto Chamorro, Head of the Army, to the Minister of the United States, Mr. John Bezman Kerr, with date of November 18 of 1851. That same year it became a greater port with the same privileges as the port of ”San Juan del Norte”on the Atlantic Coast.
Although in 1825 the town was called Pineda City, in honor to the Chief Director of Nicaragua, Laureano Pineda, who recovered his position after being fired and exiled to Honduras together with his Ministers, this name never gained public support and the town kept being called San Juan del Sur.

Throughout its history, San Juan del Sur has been an important communications center. On March 16 of 1875, works started to connect San Juan del Sur with Corinto by telegraph, and this communication service was inaugurated on March 30of the following year during the government of Don Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Alfaro.  And in 1882 a gateway opened that allowed Nicaragua to connect with the rest of the world through an underwater cable whose service was administered by the All American Cable Company. This situation remained the same until 1960. In March of 1928, during the administration of Jose Maria Moncada, the railway network between San Jorge and San Juan del Sur was inaugurated, this way the town of San Juan del Sur was connected to the interior of the country linking the railway with the steamboat Victoria service that covered the passage between San Jorge and Granada.