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The Coronado Islands ( Islas Coronado or Islas Coronados; ; Kumeyaay: Mat hasil ewik kakap) are a group of located off the northwest coast of the Mexico state of Baja California. Battered by the wind and waves, the rocky islands are mostly uninhabited except for a small military detachment and a lighthouse keeper. Despite their barren appearance, they serve as a refuge for seabirds and support a sizable number of plants, including 6 endemic taxa found only on the islands. The waters around the islands support a considerable amount of diverse marine life.
Used extensively and intermittently by the indigenous peoples for thousands of years, the first European explorers sighted them in 1542. Centuries later, they served as weekend getaway locations, secret gambling spots, and smuggling sites until the Mexican Navy clamped down on trespassing. The tied island city of Coronado, California, to the north, was named in honor of the islands after an 1886 naming competition. During World War II, the islands were utilized in joint training exercises between Mexico and the United States, but gained notoriety when future founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, shelled the inhabited island, earning the ire of the Mexican government. Today, the islands are a Mexican wildlife refuge; visitors may anchor, scuba, and snorkel, but setting foot on the islands is prohibited without special permission from the government.
The archipelago is composed of four main islands spread out over .
Subsequent archaeological expeditions have corroborated reports of ceramic artifacts on the islands, with ceramic fragments found also on South Island. These ceramic fragments appear to have been fired in an open oven, and were likely used as cooking pots. Analysis of the artifacts suggests their production techniques are consistent with those of Yuman ceramic manufacture. Radiocarbon dating of abalone shells within the vicinity of the ceramic artifacts suggest that site was occupied intermittently from at least 1390 to 820 calibrated years Before Present. In 1542, Portuguese explorer (later naturalized Castilian) Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo was the first European to notice the islands, describing them as Las Islas Desiertas (the desert islands) due to their barren lack of soil. In 1602 the priest for Sebastián Vizcaíno's expedition, Father Antonio de la Ascención, called them Los Cuatro Coronados (the four crowned ones) to honor the four brothers who died for their Christian faith. They are also known by a number of other names, with later fisherman, upon seeing floating coffins, ghostly faces and shrouded bodies amid the rocks dubbing them Old Stone Face, The Sarcophagi, Dead Man's Island, and Corpus Christi. They have also been referred to as the Sentinels of San Diego Bay.
In 1872, the Mexican Navy began visiting the islands to prevent trespassing and reduce the damage from human impact, although business ventures still proceeded regardless. That same year, building stone of high quality was discovered on North Island. Colonel Manuel Ferrer and Tore Fidel Pujal, the editor of the newspaper La Baja California, secured the North Island in 1873, planning to use the stone. The last newspaper report of this venture was in 1882. At one point, the islands were used as a way station in the smuggling of Chinese immigrants into California. This ended after a group of Chinese were found starving and abandoned on the island.
In the 1920s and 1930s, during prohibition, the cove on the northeast side of South Coronado Island was used as a meeting place for alcohol smugglers. Since it was the time before radar, and as foggy nights are common on the islands, the large number of boats frequently resulted in collisions. There was so much traffic that a famous casino, an elaborately constructed two-story building known as the Coronado Islands Yacht Club, flourished well into the Great Depression. The casino was forced to change trajectory after the Mexican government made gambling illegal only eighteen months after it opened, re-opening the next year as a weekend getaway hotel. It later served as a garrison for Mexican soldiers who had their provisions shipped from the mainland. The structure was ultimately destroyed in the high winds and waves of a storm in 1988. Only the stone foundation remains though the name Smugglers Cove, and more rarely Casino Cove, adorn modern maps.
Around the same time that other boats visited the islands to escape prohibition, during the 1930s, the Star and Crescent Company also made frequent boat excursions to the islands. These were suspended for some time, before briefly starting back again in 1958, with the steamer Silver Gate towing a glass bottom boat to the cove on South Coronado.
In May 1943 the U.S. Navy's USS PC-815, commanded by L. Ron Hubbard, the future founder of Scientology, conducted unauthorized gunnery exercises involving the shelling of the Coronado Islands, in the belief they were uninhabited and belonged to the United States. Unfortunately for Hubbard, the islands belonged to Mexico and were occupied by the Mexican Navy. The Mexican government complained and Hubbard was relieved of command.
In October 1944, Lieutenant Robert D. Cullinane, flying a Consolidated PB2Y-3 Coronado, BuNo 7051 of the VPB-13 patrol bombing squadron, perished along with the 12 members of his crew in a crash on South Coronado.Associated Press, "Crash Kills 13", The San Bernardino Daily Sun, San Bernardino, California, 20 October 1944, Volume 51, p. 4. Wreckage belonging to the aircraft is located on the western-facing slope of South Island.
The Coronado Islands are under the jurisdiction of the municipality of Tijuana, Baja California, as ruled in the books of the Baja Californian Government, published on December 20, 1959. Today, the only inhabitants of the island are Mexican Navy personnel and a lighthouse keeper on South Island. As the islands are a natural protected area, access to the islands is restricted to governmental personnel and permitted scientists. Although landing on the islands is prohibited, the waters around them are still a frequent destination for Scuba diving, Snorkeling and fishermen.
This habitat is most typical of northwestern Baja California, ranging from the town of San Vicente to the vicinity of Punta San Carlos, a coastal swathe of about . It occurs farther north, but in a more fragmented pattern, occupying the fringe coastal bluffs and up to the Mexico–United States border and sparsely north to Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve in San Diego County, California. (2025). 9781889878447 ISBN 9781889878447 It is also present on the other offshore islands of the region, including Isla San Martin and Todos Santos Island, but also portions of San Clemente and Santa Catalina Island in the southern Channel Islands of California.
On South Island the area at the extreme northern end, near the lighthouse, has diverging vegetation. Here, the vegetation takes on an aspect of coastal sage scrub. Coastal sage scrub consists of low-growing, aromatic and more herbaceous plants with soft, drought-deciduous leaves as opposed to those of the succulent scrub. The dominant plants found in this area include California sagebrush ( Artemisia californica), lemonade berry ( Rhus integrifolia), California buckwheat ( Eriogonum fasciculatum) and toyon ( Heteromeles). This area is the only location on South Island where Eriogonum fasciculatum, Heteromeles arbutifolia, and broom baccharis ( Baccharis sarothroides) grow. Also present on the north end, but on the east slope, is the endemic Galium coronadoense and Galium angustifolium. Non-native plants such as crystalline ice plant ( Mesembryanthemum crystallinum) are present in disturbed areas, especially along trails. Interestingly, this non-native plant provides shelter for the commonly-occurring endemic rattlesnake.
Anacardiaceae
Ten species of reptiles and amphibians are also found on the islands. The best known is the Coronado rattlesnake ( Crotalus oreganus caliginis), which is a smaller subspecies than the one found on the mainland. There is also the Coronado Island gopher snake, which feeds off birds' eggs, the Western skink, which is found on all four islands, and the arboreal salamanders which live on the three biggest islands. Southern alligator lizards are found on the north, south and central islands.
There are two types of land mammals on the islands: rabbits and mice. How they reached the islands is currently unknown.
Sea mammals are plentiful and it is not uncommon to see groups of California sea lions and Pinniped. Middle Island is home to a small colony of northern elephant seals.
This links to a news article about the use of one of the islands as a waypoint for illegal migration to the United States. November 2010 [2]
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