Guerrero Negro

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Guerrero Negro is the largest town located in the municipality of Mulegé in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur (BCS). It had a population of 11,894 in the 2005 census. Guerrero Negro is served by Guerrero Negro Airport.

The town has a celebration each year to hail the annual arrival of the gray whale to calve in the lagoons of BCS. This festival occurs during the first half of February. Another town in BCS, the port of San Blas, BCS has a similar festival on February 24 and 25.^[1]

The population of Guerrero Negro was born in 1957 when a North American by the name of Daniel Ludwig--who also constructed the hotel Acapulco Princess in the port of Acapulco, Guerrero--decided to install a salt mine there to supply the demand of salt in the western United States. The salt mine was established around the coastal lagoon Eye of Hare taking advantage of the heavy salinity of the place, without realizing that eventually this company, called Exportadora de Sal, S.A., of C.V. ("Salt Exporters, Inc."), would become the greatest salt mine in the world, with a production of seven million tons of salt per annum, exported to the main centers of consumption in the Pacific basin, especially Japan, Korea, the United States, Canada, Taiwan and New Zealand. In 1973 Daniel Ludwig sold the company to the Mexican government and the corporation Mitsubishi, 51% and 49% respectively, giving rise to a historic business success which continues to the present. The company is distinguished not only by its growth and its yield, but also by the progress which has reached more than a thousand employees, their community and its ecological surroundings: The salt mine, located in a site of extraordinary beauty, within a reserve of the biosphere, has been pivotal in the development of the region, where each winter whales gather, many species of resident and migratory birds stay, visiting birds originating mainly in the United States and Europe.

Guerrero Negro is the Spanish translation of Black Warrior, an American whaling ship that sank near the coast in the 1850s. It was during this era that Captain Charles Scammon discovered a prolific whale breeding lagoon which became a choice hunting ground for Yankee and European whalers. Although locally known as Laguna "Ojo de Liebre" (eye of the jackrabbit), this lagoon is better known around the world as Scammon's.

The town is on Federal Highway 1.