Hacienda Buena Vista - Brief History

Brief History

Hacienda Buena Vista was started as a truck farm to produce mostly plantains, bananas, corn and avocados, by Don Salvador de Vives in 1833. De Vives was a Catalonian immigrant arriving from Venezuela and he set up the farm to sell its produce in the Ponce market and in the sugar cane estates along the southern coast. Originally, the Vives estate covered 500 acres (2.0 km2).

In 1845, the son of Don Salvador added a corn mill operation to the profitable fruit and vegetable production. Later, Don Salvador's grandson oversaw the addition of coffee growing and processing to the plantains and cornmeal, taking advantage of the great coffee-growing boom of the 1880s and 1890s. Don Salvador's son and grandson introduced some of the most innovative farm machinery on the island, powered by a nearby 100-foot (30 m) waterfall. Eventually Hacienda Buena Vista would become one of the most successful plantations in the mountains of Puerto Rico.

A series of hurricanes and the failing coffee market brought operations at the Hacienda to a standstill by 1900, and gradually Hacienda Buena Vista fell into disrepair and was partially abandoned.

By 1937 agriculture had seriously declined in Puerto Rico, and the plantation was abandoned, becoming mostly a weekend country house for the Vives heirs. Worker barracks, outbuildings and equipment deteriorated rapidly under the humid tropical climate and rainfall.

In 1984, the Puerto Rico Conservation Trust bought 86 of the original 500 acres (2.0 km2), with the intention of restoring it. Despite the grave deterioration of the coffee-processing machinery and the farm buildings, the Conservation Trust managed to restore the estate so that it could be used to educate the public about the golden era of fine coffee growing in the mountains of Puerto Rico. The original owners donated many of the furnishings, and the Conservation Trust purchased other authentic pieces.

Hacienda Buena Vista is today a well-known educational destination. The machinery of the original Hacienda has been put in motion again, farm animals roam the grounds, the farmhouse rooms have been furnished, and the scent of freshly roasted coffee fills the surrounding air. Visitors can take tours through the old Vives country home and explore the plantation buildings and grounds. Authentic 19th-century farm machinery is exhibited that shows how a coffee plantation worked in the 1880s.