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For years I have tried to find the actual location of Santa Ana where Manuel de Ocio started mining in So. Baja. Having already been to the Real de Santa Ana, which is El Mortero where the silver ore was refined, I knew it was nearby. Hiking the Arroyo de Fundacion So. of La Paz, I talked to a rancher who knew what I was referring to and took me to the site. The first photo is a test (for me), but shows one of two hornos for refining silver ore at the Real de Santa Ana. Dated about 1748 when Ocio started mining in the area. If I can successfully post photos, I'll start adding more.

It works!

Hiking up the Arroyo de Fundacion (4X4 drivable for several miles) passes El Mortero, a site from around 1748 where water was used to drive millstones to grind the silver ore. There are two structures as part of an aquaduct that are separated by about 1/2 mile where the falling water (assumption) drove the apparatus for grinding ore. One of the old hornos is buried and cannot be located now (I've tried...I know it's there!), but the first photo shows the one still uncovered. Hiking up the arroyo for some distance one passes the mining area, but well guarded and currently being mined by locals. Lots of amigoing etc. would not let us pass to photograph the mining. It is gold mining currently. So walking upstream more gave us the opportunity to talk to ranchers and finally one knew the site (confirmed by INAH, National Institute of Anthropology and History) and we were taken there (and left). Few structures remaining, most melted away. Shards of pottery, some Chinese porcelain, foundations, a few partial walls. Being reclaimed by nature, gone in a few years. Photos will be coming along with expanded history of this incredible time and this man (Ocio).

Second photo is horno with legs to illustrate size and how earth is covering it up too.

Jack, if you email the images, I will put them all up... and can add them to your web page http://vivabaja.com/swords Just include the caption information for each photo.

Piece of cake on posting pics here, huh Jack!! Thank you for hiking in to document & share this rapidly disappearing history!

Love the history lesson via photos Jack...

so cool

Finally located and photographed Santa Ana, did not GPS intentionally. Pretty much gone, melted away, but since the middle 1700s that is to be expected. Placed near the Arroyo de Fundacion and near Manuel de Ocio's 3 mines and a short distance from El Mortero, it became the centralized site of mining in the area that continued for many years. So Santa Ana was a mining camp, never became what Ocio envisioned. Goods were offloaded from the Sea of Cortez at the surgidero of Cerralvo. Still trying to locate that site.

More on El Mortero next.

Site is covered with brush and trees, invisible from 25 yards.

Sure David.

Thanks Jack for the introduction and the super historical infromation on the development of Baja .. sure is great stuff to learn about and see .. from various aspects

Thank you so much for sharing ...

Great photos. It's amazing to think that some of those sites are nearly 300 years old!

Jack, do you have a feel for what that building was... storage room, home, or perhaps the Jesuit Nápoli's mission attempt (that had the wall fall in the storm killing so many in 1723)??? This is a great discovery.

Nope David...most of the structures are melted into the ground. If you double click the photo Talk Baja will enlarge the photo and you can see the floor and wall foundation stones in the foreground. It occupied a large area, but most was completely leveled to ground level and just outlines were left (like San Pedro Martir Mission). Very overgrown with trees and spiny bushes made any decent photography impossible. No roads, trails, nada. Up off the arroyo with intersecting arroyos that are probably more recent. Typically, looking for this for several years, we hiked up and down probable places, talked to ranchers, met with blank stares, finally met a very articulate and informed lady, bingo! Leaving it for the future archeologists as it's very intact. Going to post the mortero photos and Ocio's hacienda next. Then off to Valle Perdido mining.

On the missions, I had the mission plot diagrams of each mission from INAH and therefore one could determine the probable purpose of floor outlines, but not aware of any such thing for Santa Ana. As a poor mining camp of around 70 souls being fed by the missions of Santiago and Todos Santos putting plots on paper probably were never considered. After all, there was silver in the ground.

Mue bueno Jack.. didn't know they were roller's plus ZOOM too ... was just scrolling ... WOW Outstanding posting ...

Refining the silver ore required grinding it down to a powder. At the mortero water power was used coming from upstream in an aquaduct, then falling from the structure in the photograph. Energy from the falling water turned the apparatus that moved grindstones, or as one sees in the 1700s in Potosí Bolivia silver extraction, rising and falling "stamps" similar to the stamp mills in gold rush California. There are two tall structures where water fell, stones surviving, but nothing else. Fun to look at and try to figure out. Once pulverized, the horno was used to complete the processing.

Top of one of the structures showing the water channel before it falls (away from the camera).

So what is the mortar that holds all those rocks together?

Roots of the zalate, wild fig, help hold the structures together.

Another good one... it was the question in my mind.. HOW they hell did they do it... way the heck out there...

The interior of the structure (parallel walls) where a probable waterwheel turned. There are side openings for a probable axle. The tree in the middle is a zalate. The floor is filled with dirt and there is evidence of the top of a bricked up arch at dirt level at the lower end. Possible to release the water down to the stream. Lots of ??????.

Next: over to El Oro near Las Gallinas to the remains of Ocio's hacienda.