Nestled in a beautiful wooded mountain valley on the north side of La Tigra National Park about an hour's drive northeast of Tegucigalpa, San Juancito began it's career around 1880 when mining investors revived the old Spanish gold and silver diggings from the 16th century. With outside investment the town boomed and the mines continued to extract gold and silver from the mountainside until the 1950's. Miners were well paid by local standards, and their families enjoyed the best in schools and medical facilities.
During the boom years San Juancito was the most modern and progressive city in Central America, boasting a maximum population of nearly fifty thousand people. Mining company money brought many new and never before seen innovations to the area. San Juancito had the very first electrical power plant in Honduras, thus the first electric lights, as well as the first movie theater in all of Central America and Honduras' first telegraph. The first bottling plant in Latin America was built in San Juancito by Pepsi Cola.
In the mid-fifties the combination of dwindling ore reserves as well as chronic labor disputes saw the foreign mining companies and investors pull out of the area, forcing most of the population to join in the exodus to seek other work. The remaining inhabitants were left to eek out a living as best they could.
In October, 1998, Hurricane Mitch struck Honduras, the most devastating natural disaster to ever befall the country. Many lives were lost and at least sixty houses were destroyed in San Juancito either by the flooding river or by mud and rockslides from the mountains. Though many foreign organizations came to help rebuild the infrastructure, the little pueblo never recovered from this terrible blow.
A walk through San Juancito is a beautiful experience. Two small gushing streams converge right in the middle of town, and a slow nature walk up either is food for the soul. Soft cool breezes wafting down the canyon perfectly complement a wading hike in the crystal clear water, while unrecognized chirps and coos of jungle birds are everywhere. In town many people are living in formerly abandoned miners' residences, while quite a number of empty houses evoke a lonely and haunting combination of bittersweet nostalgia and an eerie sense of the presence of spirits of lives long past.
Today San Juancito is home to maybe a thousand hardy souls, many of whom commute to Tegucigalpa every day to work. The town is the lesser of the two principal entrances to La Tigra National Park but they see very few tourists because the unspoiled beauty of the park's north side has yet to be discovered by the world. The inhabitants are a poor but happy and proud people. Though surrounded by some of the most beautiful and lush tropical scenery in the world, they also see at every turn the scars of tragedy and the crumbling ruins of past glory.
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