THE STORIES BEHIND THE OSA PENINSULA HISTORY

Anita Polanco an Osa Peninsula Historical Pioneer!

The second major migration, and the first Gold Rush, came to the Osa Peninsula in the late 1930s.

Even in the early decades of the twentieth century, few Costa Ricans dared enter the southern. It was only the Native Indians that walked the region. But when the United Fruit Company began to explore the area around the Golfo Dulce for banana production, migration grew. The UFC bought land, and established ​​offices in Puerto Jimenez, while they began testing the Osa for the planting of bananas.

Anita Polanco arrived with her husband in search of gold as the first gold rush took hold in the years before 1940. They came to Puerto Jimenez to begin their walk across the mountains looking for gold. Many people came from Puntarenas, but there were also Panamanians, Nicaraguans, Germans and Americans attracted by the yellow metal. Yet after years of digging and scratching out a living in the wilds of the Madrigal River on the Pacific side, Anita decided to move her family to Rio Tigre, north of Puerto Jimenez. “My mom, tired of walking the mountains, said: No more, let’s get a store”. They settled in Rio Tigre, to raise their family and begin a store to carry merchandise that would accept gold as payment.

“In those days the streets in Puerto Jimenez were grass,” says Anita. “It was a very small place with all the families we knew. There were the Quintero, the Cevallo, the Aguirres, the Chavarria poor and rich Chavarrías, the Pinzon family, the Lescano, the Francesqui … Some 25 families … “

The arrival of oreros (goldmines) to the areas on the Osa Peninsula in the late 1930s had very little social impact, beyond the establishment of bars and the rise of certain vices. There were no roads onto the Osa Peninsula till the 1980s.

We continue to look for Osa Stories as we all know her history is hidden in the people who lived here at that time. Pura Vida!