Minas de Oro is a municipality in the Honduran

department Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

Comayagua Comayagua () is a city, municipality and old capital of Honduras, located northwest of Tegucigalpa on the highway to San Pedro Sula and above sea level. The accelerated growth experienced by the city of Comayagua led the municipal authoriti ...

Geography

Minas de Oro is located to the northeast of

, 150 km to the northwest of

Tegucigalpa Tegucigalpa (, , ), formally Tegucigalpa, Municipality of the Central District ( es, Tegucigalpa, Municipio del Distrito Central or ''Tegucigalpa, M.D.C.''), and colloquially referred to as ''Tegus'' or ''Teguz'', is the capital and largest city ...

, the capital of

Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Oce ...

. It is surround by the mountains named Grande, El Cobre and El Peñón. To the north, the district of Victoria; to the south, the

San Luis San Luis (Spanish for "Saint Louis") may refer to: Places Argentina * San Luis Province * San Luis, Argentina, capital of San Luis Province Belize * San Luis, Belize, in Orange Walk District Colombia * San Luis, Antioquia, a town and municipality ...

and

Esquías Esquías is a municipality in the Honduran department of Comayagua Comayagua () is a city, municipality and old capital of Honduras, located northwest of Tegucigalpa on the highway to San Pedro Sula and above sea level. The accelerated g ...

districts; to the east, the San Jose del Potero district and to the west, the La Libertad district.

Historical information

Minas de Oro was founded as a consequence of the

gold rush A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, New Z ...

es that were common in the region, when workers and neighbours settled in the area. During one of his visits to this place, Juan Lindo discovered a gold mine. For that reason it has continued to be called "Minas de Oro" (Gold Mines). During Dr. Policarpo Bonillas's administration, citizenship began negotiating with the ''Círculo de Cabañas'', an association that grouped the municipalities of Minas de Oro,

and

San José del Potrero San José del Potrero is a municipality in the Honduran department of Comayagua Comayagua () is a city, municipality and old capital of Honduras, located northwest of Tegucigalpa on the highway to San Pedro Sula and above sea level. The ...

. These negotiations led to the transfer of the head of such association to Minas de Oro in 1893, during general Domingo Vazquez's administration. To justify the transfer, the citizenship argued that the powerful increment of the footwear industry, the commercial relationship between Minas de Oro,

and the northern coast, and the growing café crops in the region were becoming Minas de Oro's main patrimonies, which at least in the first case it held true in the subsequent years.

Education

City of education

In the 1990s, Minas de Oro was called a "city of education" in

because it was the only municipality where all the towns had access to a primary education.

The Malcotal

Minas de Oro counted on the Malcotal School, oriented to the agroforestal formation led by a North American. The only thing left of this institution is a house turned centre of tourist retirements in the highway that leads to Mines of San Antonio.

Evangelical Boarding School

Minas de Oro were counted by the decade from the 1960s to 1990s in the Famous Evangelical Institute that has a boarding school where students from all of the republic of Honduras went. Its musical, English formation and Biblical education was recognised. At the beginning of the 1960s, it closed because of stoked heat from the insecurity in the access routes, stop cost of fuels, local competition, and complexity in the administrative handling of this type of institution.

Minas de Oro Regional Institute

List of villages

*031101 Minas de Oro *031102 Agua Blanca *031103 El Socorro *031104 El Zompopero *031105 La Hoya de la Puerta *031106 Las Huertas *031107 Minas de San Antonio *031108 Montecitos *031109 Pimientilla *031110 San Isidro del Mal Paso *031111 Santa Cruz

List of

Notable people

* Neida Sandoval – A host of the morning show ''Despierta America'' on the Spanish language network

Univision Univision () is an American Spanish-language free-to-air television network owned by TelevisaUnivision. It is the United States' largest provider of Spanish-language content. The network's programming is aimed at the Latino public and includes ...

. *Vicente Cáceres – teacher in one of the largest public schools of

. *Ramón Carías Donaire – teacher, principal of the Villa Ahumada Normal School. *José María Calix – journalist

Sites of interest

*Cerro Pelon – A mountain to the north of the city that is named after its lack of large trees. Only desert plants like

cacti A cactus (, or less commonly, cactus) is a member of the plant family Cactaceae, a family comprising about 127 genera with some 1750 known species of the order Caryophyllales. The word ''cactus'' derives, through Latin, from the Ancient Greek ...

, small palms and bushes grow. There are also many caves that make popular tourist attractions. This site is also known as ''Cerro Grande'' (Large Hill) or Cacalotepe in some geography books. Over the top there is a point of the first order geodetic net. *Evangelical Institute installations *El Malcotal installations *El Manantial Ecocenter *Cerro Los Tornillos *Some closed mines

References

External links

Minas de Oro website
{{Authority control Municipalities of the Comayagua Department