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Home to only a few hundred residents, El Triunfo, or “The Triumph,” was once a thriving gold and silver mining town in Baja California Sur. Today, visitors explore a relic of the well-kept local history.
I personally like this small, charming town due to its beautiful flowers and palms, the lush vegetation on the surrounding hills, and its cobblestone roads. It is a town where I don’t have to wear my cowboy boots like in other sandy places in this mostly desert area.
Now about 350 people live in El Triunfo, but it once boasted a population of over 10.000 inhabitants. Mining began in the late 1700s and the mines and town shut down in 1926. Without jobs, the people quickly moved away and El Triunfo became a ghost town. The forced migration was hard on the people left behind but helped preserve the rich history of the area. The mineral-rich Baja peninsula still holds valuable resources and there is international pressure to resume mining.
The future is looking good for El Triunfo though, as the Mexican government is keen on boosting ecological and cultural tourism in favor of natural resource developments. The town is now registered as a "Pueblo Historico".
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El Triunfo's Museos:
Museo Ruta De Plata
Also called the Silver Route Museum opened in 2017 and has become a focal point for visitors who want to learn more about El Triunfo, its mining history, and the mining history of Baja California Sur as a whole. It preserves and shows the mining history of the El Triunfo area. It is an interactive, bilingual, and bicultural museum. El Triunfo was once a flourishing gold and silver mining town. A small path leads up to the historic smoke chimneys and smelting ruins that still tower over El Triunfo.
The museum includes a video introduction, exhibits about the significant locations along BCS’ “Ruta de Plata” (including El Triunfo), shares oral history videos of residents who remember mining operations in the region and has a simulated mine entrance where you can get a sense of what the work of mining was actually like.
Besides the museum's historic main building is a pavilion filled with beautiful samples of precious stones from the El Triunfo mountains that were found by the miners.
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Admission to the museum is 100 pesos (about US$5) per person and it’s open daily except Tuesdays.
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Museo Del Vaquero De Las Californias
Also known as MUVACA, presents more than 300 years of history of the origins of the vaquero and ranchero culture in the Californias. This bilingual, bicultural, and multimedia museum is located in the historic town of El Triunfo, Baja California Sur.
Natives, miners, and missionaries weren’t the only ones in El Triunfo throughout time: like any good Wild Western destination, there were cowboys too. Ranching work dates back some 300 years in Baja California - long before the now Western US was settled - and adopted the Mexican way of ranching traditions.
Learn about cowboy traditions that are kept alive today by ranchero families living in the rugged mountains of Baja California Sur, Mexico. From Baja California Sur, vaquero families migrated north into what was known as Alta California, developing both the cities of San Francisco and Monterey. MUVACA brings this history to life as you explore the values, lifestyle, and identity of these people and their culture that still exists today.
ALTA CALIFORNIA was the name given in 1824 to a vast territory that belonged to Mexico and that included present-day California, Nevada, and Utah as well as parts of Arizona, Wyoming, and Colorado. The first map above shows the United States of America and Mexico as they are today, including the area that was previously known as Alta California. The second map, from 1823, directly above, displays a close-up of both Alta and Baja California, as well as the state of Sonora.
A VAQUERO is a skilled livestock herder of a culture that evolved in Mexico from a methodology brought from Iberia. The vaquero is the foundation for what is known as a cowboy. A vaquero may sometimes be referred to as a RANCHERO, or a person working on a ranch in Latin America.
The Cowboy Museum of the Californias celebrates this in Baja California Sur. The museum is bilingual and has multimedia exhibits that introduce you to the founding vaquero families of the region, and how their traditions have been shaped by – and shaped in return – life in Baja California Sur.
Admission is 100 pesos (US$5) with a discount for locals (75 pesos) as well as seniors and students (60 pesos).
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Museo De La Musica
This specialty museum caters to antique music instrument lovers. El Triunfo’s boom period brought a lot of culture to the area, including many musical instruments – some of which are preserved at the Museo De La Musica. It displays not only music instruments but also sheet music and stories about the people who owned and practiced on them.
The museum is open Wednesday through Saturday. Free admission.
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Dining & Drinking in El Triunfo:
Caffe El Triunfo
This multi-level cafe and restaurant is in a lovingly restored building with courtyards, where pizza, bread, and pastries come fresh from the wood-fired brick oven. They also offer their delicious European-style breads, and sweet bakery items or coffee-to-go on an (always busy) counter, right when you enter the building.
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Margery’s Tea Room
This place captures another slice of culture and brings it into the present – in this case, one you can live in. They don’t offer tea seatings daily (usually just on weekends and some special occasions). Keep an eye on their Facebook page to see if it overlaps with your trip – then don one of the hats they provide, sip with your pinky up, and imagine a time 100+ years ago when miner’s wives met in these rooms and drank tea from this china while enjoying the high life in El Triunfo.
Their FB site https://www.facebook.com/MargerysTeaRoom/ is in Spanish only, but with the help of a translation app you will find the information and latest news about events.
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El Minero Restaurant & Wine Bar
Their menu features signature items such as fresh regional seafood, handmade sausages, artisanal cheeses, and their traditional paella, awarded in 2015 by the National Chamber of Restaurants and Spiced Food Industry. Enjoy lunch of dinner at a relaxing patio with a perfect view of a 19th-century long-standing chimney that takes you back to the golden age of El Triunfo. In El Minero's tiny cellar enjoy national and international wines and cocktails.
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When you drive through the town during pitaya season, there are men standing on every corner with buckets of pitayas for sale. All you have to do is roll down your window, and you can buy a fresh bundle of white and red pitayas and even mangos.
Don’t miss a visit to the huge cathedral. The Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe church is located in El Triunfo, Baja California Sur, Mexico. It's a historic landmark and the first non-missionary church in the Baja.
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Even though this is such a tiny town there is so much to see and do.
Although no hotels exist today, El Triunfo is having quite a renaissance.
Enjoy your trip to El Triunfo!
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