Pueblo Viejo National Park

The Archaeological and Historical National Park of Pueblo Viejo, La Vega (also known as the National Park of Concepción de la Vega), in the La Vega Province of the Dominican Republic, includes the old city of Concepción de la Vega, and the Pueblo Viejo gold mine.

Ruins of La Concepción fortress at Pueblo Viejo National Park.

History

The city of La Concepción de la Vega was founded as a fortress by Christopher Columbus in 1495. The city was built up around the fortress and the gold mine of Pueblo Viejo, as the extraction of precious metals was the main objective of Columbus' missions to the new world.[1] The town was destroyed by an earthquake on December 2, 1562, and the survivors moved to the present site on the banks of the Camú River.

Mining

The Pueblo Viejo mine is the Dominican Republic's only gold mine, and was at one point the Western Hemisphere's largest and most productive gold mine.[2] The first extraction of gold from this site was undertaken in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, however.

World Heritage Status

This site was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List on November 21, 2001 in the Cultural category.

Notes
  1. Archaeological and Historical National Park of Pueblo Viejo, La Vega (#) - UNESCO World Heritage Centre
  2. Warwick-Ching (1993) p 174
gollark: These are just slight variations on existing animals.
gollark: I don't think this is true, except in a very broadly defined sense.
gollark: If *evolution*... well, "attempts" would be anthropomorphizing it... to cross said chasm, all it can do is just throw broken ones at it repeatedly with no understanding, and select for better ones until one actually sticks.
gollark: If I want to cross a chasm with a bridge, or something, I can draw on my limited knowledge of physics and materials science and whatever and put together a somewhat sensible prototype, then make inferences from what happens to it, and get something working out.
gollark: No. We can reason about problems in various ways. So can some animals.

References

Archaeological and Historical National Park of Pueblo Viejo, La Vega (#) - UNESCO World Heritage Centre Accessed 2009-02-26.

Warwick-Ching, T. (1993), The International Gold Trade, Woodhead, ISBN 1-85573-072-3.

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