The Spanish found the fishing village of Acapulco in 1521, just four months after the fall of México, on the feast day of Santa Lucía, so the official name is “bahía de sta. Lucía”. The village sat at the western end of the finest natural deep-water harbor south of San Francisco. Cortés himself established a shipyard here to launch boats to continue the search for a trade route to the fabled Spice Islands (today the Moluccas).
The problem wasn’t going west across the Pacific – Magellan did that in the same year as the Conquest, 1521. Unfortunately, getting back to México proved exceedingly difficult because of prevailing winds and ocean currents. Andrés de Urdaneta finally discovered the way back (“tornavuelta”) in 1565 and for the next 250 years Acapulco was the most important port on the Pacific. Fort San Diego, begun 1614 to protect the port and the Galleons, was largely destroyed in 1776 but rebuilt rechristened Fort San Carlos. The old name stuck, however, and today the Fort has been restored as a first class museum to the galleons and the oriental luxuries they brought to the annual Acapulco Fair, where they were exchanged for enormous quantities of Mexican silver.
The yearly voyages of the Manila Galleons ended in 1815, during the war of Independence, and Acapulco was largely forgotten until World War II made vacations in Europe impossible.
The 1940’s
In the 1940’s, when Europe was caught up in the war, Hollywood discovered Acapulc. There are some great shots of Acapulco’s beaches in Orson Well’s otherwise totally forgettable 1947 film, “ The Lady From Shanghai ”.
During those years a number of Hollywood stars invested in Hotel Los Flamingos , atop the highest cliffs in town. Los Flamingos is a long way from the tourist centers and it’s a quiet retreat and a great place to watch the sun set. When I came here with my family in the 1940’s we stayed at Los Flamingos, and it’s always been a favorite of mine. Other Hollywood people went to Hotel Mirador, and one of them noticed the boys playing on and diving from the cliffs behind the building, where the hotel dumped its trash. He organized the divers into a union, started paying them to dive, turned the hotel around and made La Quebrada an international symbol of Acapulco.
The The peninsula which forms the harbor is connected to the mainland by a very narrow neck. Manzanillo beach (a ship junkyard) is on the bay side; little Playa La Angosta is on the Pacific side and virtually unknown to most tourists.
President Miguel Alemán (1946-1952) had a special love for Acapulco, and he was the force behind the construction of a seaside drive, now known as the Costera Miguel Alemán, which runs along the north side of the oval bay, past what was then known as the “Afternoon Beach,” Hornos to the Naval Base. Bricks for the reconstruction of Fort San Diego were made in ovens (“hornos”) on this Hornos, and that gave it the name. Farther east is Condesa Beach, which has a reputation of being gay friendly.
The 1960’s
Until the late 1950’s there was virtually nothing east of Fort San Diego , which had by then seen use as a bull ring, the city jail, and finally an army barracks. Everything changed in the 1960’s, when three factors led to almost explosive growth: construction of the Costera, movement of the airport from Pie de la Cuesta to a new site southeast of town, and the onset of jet air service from the United States. New high-rise luxury hotels sprang up east of Parque Papagayo (former site of the Hotel Papagayo and an original airport in Acapulco) The Acapulco Hilton opened then near what is now Playa Condesa, and advertised that air-conditioning was not necessary (it wasn’t, then). The Hilton has added several newer wings and undergone a number of reincarnations.
The 1970’s
Acapulco probably hit a peak of popularity in the 1970’s.
