Misión Estero de las Palmas de San José del Cabo Añuití
Mission San José del Cabo (est. 1730) was the southernmost of the Jesuit missions on the Baja California peninsula, located near the modern city of San José del Cabo in Baja California Sur, Mexico. The mission was dedicated to Saint Joseph. The southern cape of the Baja California peninsula had been an often-visited landmark for Spanish navigators (as well as English privateers) for nearly two centuries when a mission was finally established at the Pericú settlement of Añuití in 1730 by Nicolá Tamaral. The Río San José, or San José River, stops just shy of the ocean, with a one km long sand bar creating an estuary, the third largest in Mexico. This pooling of brackish water has created an oasis in the surrounding Sarcocaule desert. The Río San José flows largely underground for from its origin in the Sierra de la Laguna (Laguna Mountains). For more than 250 years it has furnished drinking and irrigation water for the town of San Jose del Cabo, beginning as a source of fresh water for Spanish galleons traveling back from the Philippines. Over the sand bar from the estuary is a bay referred to by early Spanish explorers, including Sebastian Vizcaino, as