By Captain Pat Rains
SEA Magazine, February 2014
It’s a lot if the distinction is between Bay of Dreams or Bay of the Dead Men.
When coasting between Los Cabos and La Paz around the bulging East Cape region of southern Baja, I’ve anchored many times in a picturesque little bay — one of the few that provides good shelter in a prevailing north wind. Since the 1880s, this bay has been charted as Bahia de los Muertos, but today’s boaters know it better as Bahia de los Suenos: Bay of Dreams.
BAY OF THE DEAD?
Dead people? Really? No. In this case, the word muertos refers to dead-man anchors or moorings that were purposely set in the bay nearly 150 years ago.
In 1862, the El Triunfo mining company struck a bonanza, a fabulous vein of silver atop Sierra La Gata. To bring train cars loaded with ore down the mountain, the company had to build a narrow-gauge railroad. The train tracks stopped at the sheltered north end of the bay, at the foot of Punta Perico, where the company built a warehouse and a loading wharf. To anchor its ore barges when not in use, El Triunfo buried six train-car axles in the soft, sandy bottom.
No wonder cartographers called it Bahia de los Muertos: Bay of the Dead Men.