Ponce is located on the south side of the island. The Sec­ond largest city in Puerto Rico, also known as “La Perla del Sur” or The Pearl of the South.  Ponce is also know as The “Ciu­dad Seno­r­ial (Majes­tic City) and “La Ciu­dad de los Leones (City of Lions). Ponce was the Cap­i­tal of the south until 1989.  It is 3 miles from the south­ern coast. Ponce is also Puerto Rico’s sec­ond largest city. Ponce dates from the late 17^th cen­tury.  It con­sists of colo­nial homes, churches, foun­tains, plazas, and a fire sta­tions (Par­que de Bom­bas).  The city was named after Juan Ponce de Leon y Loayza, the great grand­son of Juan Ponce de Leon, the Span­ish  Con­quis­ta­dor. In 1692, Juan Ponce de Leon received per­mis­sion from the Span­ish Roy­alty to cre­ate a ham­let around a small chapel ded­i­cated to Lady of Guadalupe.   In 1848 the ham­let was declared a villa and by 1877, obtained a city char­ter. A large flow of immi­grants from Cat­alo­nia, the Balearie Islands, and other parts of Spain, as well as from the United King­dom, Ger­many, Cuba, France, Colum­bia and Venezuela assured the city’s con­tin­ued growth. Most of these immi­grants made con­sid­er­able for­tunes in cof­fee, corn and sugar cane har­vest­ing, pro­duc­ing rum, bank­ing and finance.  In some years of the late 19^th cen­tury, Ponce had a larger pop­u­la­tion and also stronger finan­cial insti­tu­tions than those of the cap­i­tal, San Juan. The Coat of Arms of Ponce con­tains a red and black col­ored shield.  There is a five tower gold crown that indi­cates that Ponce is a city by royal decree.  As an exte­rior from the shield, there is a sugar cane plant on the right side and to the left, a cof­fee tree branch.  The shield of Ponce is divided by a diag­o­nal line that crosses straight from the supe­rior end to the left infe­rior end.  In this divided field is the color red (for the fire that almost destroyed the city), that cov­ers the supe­rior right por­tion and the color black (for the ashes after that fire).  On that black and red back­ground is a yel­low lion with black name, walk­ing towards the left of the shield, fac­ing right of the shield.  The lion is on a bridge, mean­ing that you must cross a river to enter the city by any region.  The shield is bor­dered by a cof­fee plant branch and a sugar cane plane, in which the early econ­omy of the city was based.

Ponce His­tory:

The Ponce Fire of 1883

In 1883, Ponce was dev­as­tated by an enor­mous fire. The fire almost destroyed most of the south coast of Puerto Rico. Thanks to the Ponce fire­men (who’s fire­house was located at Par­que de Bom­bas), Ponce and the coast were saved. The fire­men from The Par­que de Bom­bas engaged in a long bat­tle with the fire that lasted twenty-two days before it was extin­guished. The Par­que de Bom­bas now stands as a museum and tourist attrac­tion, which is still on the same loca­tion at the cen­tral plaza (Plaza Las Deli­cias). The fire sta­tion con­tin­ued to serve as an active fire sta­tion until 1990, when it was closed and used entirely as a museum. For their brav­ery, the group was hon­ored both in Ponce and through­out the rest of Puerto Rico. A pic­ture of the fire­men hangs on the wall of the Par­que de Bom­bas building.

The Ponce Massacre

On March 21, 1937, Ponce was involved in an inci­dent called the Ponce Mas­sacre. The inci­dent occurred as a result of a march orga­nized in Ponce on Palm Sun­day by the Puerto Rican Nation­al­ist Party. The march was orga­nized to com­mem­o­rate the end of slav­ery and to also protest the incar­cer­a­tion of Nation­al­ist Leader, Pedro Abizu Cam­pos, as well as demand­ing Puerto Rico’s Inde­pen­dence from the United States. Nine­teen unarmed nation­al­ist pro­test­ers, peace­fully cel­e­brat­ing the Abo­li­tion of Slav­ery (in 1873), were fatally shot by police under orders from the United States, CoIn­t­er­Pro (Counter Intel­li­gence Pro­gram) and non-democratically elected mil­i­tary assigned Gov­er­nor, Major Gen­eral, Blan­ton C. Winship.

The Mameyes Mudslide

In Octo­ber 1985, Ponce suf­fered a great tragedy. It occurred after a trop­i­cal storm that passed across the south coast of the island. Because of this trop­i­cal storm, the south cen­ter part of Puerto Rico expe­ri­enced a rain­fall that reached 31.6 inches. This rain­fall came after another heavy rain­fall, five months ear­lier. This resulted in a mud­slide when an entire sheet of bedrock in the moun­tain­ous bar­rio of mameyes out­side of the city, col­lapsed from the over-saturated soil bur­ring much of the bar­rio. 115 homes were destroyed or heav­ily dam­aged by the slide and 129 peo­ple lost their lives. Inter­na­tional help was needed to res­cue peo­ple and corpses. The United Stated and many for­eign coun­tries, such as Mex­ico, France, and Venezuela sent eco­nomic and human­i­tar­ian relief.

Addi­tional Infor­ma­tion will be com­ing soon