Bagaces. Known as the home of the Tempisque Conservation Area (ACT), one of the most active and dedicated conservation organizations in the country. It is an ideal place to stop, meet its people, and enjoy a cold drink on your way to Liberia or the national parks of this province.
Brief historical review.
In pre-Columbian times, the territory that currently corresponds to the Bagaces canton, a group of indigenous people called Nahua or Aztec, had an enclave or colony in the region.
Bagaces in the course of its existence as a human settlement, it has had three locations. The first in the area near the confluence of the Tenorio and Curubicí rivers (today Corobicí), in the jurisdiction of the current Cañas canton, where a hermitage was erected in 1687, with the purpose of forming a population with the inhabitants of the Bagaces valley , without achieving positive results.
The second was located to the northwest of the first, in the sector adjacent to the west bank of the river known today as Villa Vieja in the year 1739. The last was carried out in 1790, carried out by Father Nicolás Carrillo at his seat definitive, in the present city Bagaces.
The first hermitage was built in 1687. The parish was erected in 1790, dedicated to the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception. The current church was built in 1940, during the archbishopric of Monsignor Don Víctor Manuel Sanabria Martínez, second Archbishop of Costa Rica; which at this time is suffragan of the Diocese of Tilarán of the Ecclesiastical Province of Costa Rica.
In the administration of our first Head of State, Don Juan Mora Fernández, on November 11, 1824, in Law No. 20, the town of Concepción de Bagaces was granted the title of town. In law No. 63 of November 4, 1825, Bagaces constituted a town in the Cañas district of the Western Department, one of the two in which the State territory was divided, on one occasion. In law No. 105 of March 27, 1835, the town of Bagaces was part of the Department of Guanacaste.
By law No. 36 of December 7, 1848, Bagaces and Cañas formed the fourth canton of the Guanacaste province. On September 29, 1858, by law No. 22, the towns of Bagaces and Cañas were transferred to the place called Bebedero, at the confluence of the Las Piedras (now Blanco) and Tenorio rivers; Twenty-four years later, by decree of the Executive Power, of July 31, 1882, the previous law was repealed. On July 30, 1918, in the government of Don Federico Tinoco Granados, Law No. 44 was decreed, which gave the town the category of City.
In the school territorial division of the Republic established in 1886, Bagaces constituted the number one school district of this canton. The school is named after Mr. Tomás Guardia Gutiérrez.
The Liceo de Bagaces began its activities in 1968, under the administration of Mr. José Joaquín Trejos Fernández, at the facilities of the Rafael Iglesias Castro school.
The first public lighting in Bagaces was with carbide lanterns placed in 1910. Electric lighting with bulbs was installed in 1960, in the government of Mr. Mario Echandi Jiménez.
The name of the canton is in memory of the Bagatzí chief who inhabited the region when the Spanish arrived in the 16th century. According to Don Carlos Gagini in his work The Aborigines of Costa Rica, it is an indigenous word, probably from Nahuatl, which means Baga; reed, cane and tzi: place; that is to say: Place of cane or reed.
