Santiwah

San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago

 

The city of San Fernando first came into recorded history in 1595 when Sir Walter Raleigh, sailing in the Gulf of Paria on his search for El Dorado, was drawn to a steep hill that seemed to rise effortlessly out of the landscape. He had seen what we call ‘San Fernando Hill’ and continued to sail so close to the shore that he soon discovered a treasure that he hadn’t bargained for – the Pitch Lake at La Brea. He reported that after leaving the Pitch Lake, they came upon a mountain foot called ‘Anaparima’ by the native Amerindians. It has come to be called ‘Naparima’, which means ‘single hill’ in one of the Amerindian dialects. 

In 1687, Capuchin monks landed in the area and tried to convert the Amerindians to Christianity – they erected a mission called ‘Purissima Conception de Naparima’ in the shadow of the great hill. Again, the area remained quiet until the arrival of Governor Jose Maria Chacon and his Cedula of Population in 1784, which granted land to settlers and encouraged development. In 1792, he declared the settlement a town and christened it ‘San Fernando’ after the son of Carlos III, the Spanish King at the time. In living up to its Spanish name, the town developed much like a Spanish Colonial town – with a central square at the waterfront, and other key buildings such as a ‘Casa Real’ (government house), a jail, and of course, a church. 

The population of San Fernando was second only to that of Port of Spain and in 1818, the two towns were linked by the introduction of a coastal steamer service between them. This key transportation connection, as well as the prosperity of the area’s growing sugar industry, contributed to the expansion of San Fernando. 

Development proceeded at a quick pace after that, gaining advancements like a railway passenger system and improved infrastructure so that by the end of the 19th Century it was well on its way to being one of the key towns in Trinidad. It soon got other railway connections and electricity and buses as the decades went by. Development was in full throttle with road works and the like, making San Fernando more accessible and able to thrive. 

San Fernando was designated a city on November 18th, 1998 and it still stands proud – made even richer by the fact that it is a key oil and energy centre for our islands. 

Source : http://www.visittnt.com/

Sangre Grande, Trinidad

If you ask any Trinbagonian what Sangre Grande means, they will tell you it is Spanish for Big Blood though you would never discern that from the Trinbagonian pronunciation. In the late 1770s, Spanish surveyors who were charting the island for the purposes of creating a map, found that the waters of two of the tributaries of the nearby Oropuche River were red as blood, hence the name. 

About a century later, cocoa farmers began to move into the area, attracted by the nearby water supply. Transport was a challenge then, as they were 30 miles away from the capital, Port of Spain, and linked to the nearest town, Arima, by a dirt road. But they persisted, and cocoa and the POS-Arima railway service that became a reality in 1876 were both integral in creating the beginnings of what we know today as ‘Grande’. Ironically, although the signs at the station said ‘Sangre Grande Railway Station’, the train actually stopped at Cunapo. From that day, Cunapo officially ceased to exist – because if the sign said ‘Sangre Grande Railway Station’, then the area was ‘Sangre Grande. 

During the 1930s, the area continued to prosper despite a cocoa recession – and the popular refrain of the time, “Arima tonight, Sangre Grande tomorrow night”, was testament to its popularity and the laissez-faire attitude of those who lived there. The 1940s brought with it a time of economic prosperity and, some would say, moral decay, as a direct result of the US Forces who opened an air-base at Cumuto during the war. Still, the area survived that era and went on to expand population-wise, despite the fact that the days of cocoa were behind them. Today, it is a bustling, thriving town, full of activity and commercial/retail vibrancy.

 Source : http://www.visittnt.com/