|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Today’s Tampico or Santa Anna de Tampico, founded on April 1823, was born with the arrival of some neighbors from Altamira thanks to a permit granted by General Antonio López de Santa Anna. The blueprints of the new city was the responsibility of Don Antonio García Jiménez who measured 30 varas from the margin of the gully and traced 18 blocks and two main squares with boundaries to the Altamira Street to the north, Aduana to the east, Miradores to the west and the Tamesí River to the south, soon growing to the north and east, two years later thirteen blocks more were available that reached from the north to the street of Los Jazmines (near the Plaza de los Arrieros, today Méndez Park) and to the east to the street of Espartal.
Since the beginning, the names of the street were given in accordance to an important event or an specific detail. Thus, the Altamira street was named as a sign of gratitude to the inhabitants of that village that arrived to our city, in addition of being the road that linked Tampico; the Aduana street since the customs office was located in the block where now you find the buildings of Telegraphs and Post Offices; the Jazmines street, (today Alvaro Obregón) near the Plaza de los Arrieros was named since there was a house where the odor of the Jazmin flower was abundant and the Espartal street (today Aquiles Serdan) since there was a plant whose leaves were used for the manufacturing of chairs and tapestries. The main streets were made of stone or brick, specifically the ones surrounding the Liberty’s and the Constitution Squares as well as some other nearby. A few years after December 15th, 1826, the State Congress conferred Tampico the City Status. By 1835, the city had extended to the north to the margins of the Laguna del Carpintero (Carpenter’s Lagoon) near the Cortadura Channel, to the east to the Sol Street and to the west to the Casamata, a fortress that guarded the entrance to the city located where today the El Diario de Tampico newspaper offices are. Ten years later, in 1845, Tampico was a prosper city with rock paved streets and numerous houses, by 1849 the city to the north reached up to the Laguna street and to the east to the Gloria (today’s 2 de Enero), then the Ribera street was traced and was parallel to the Tamesí River and today is known as Héroes del Cañonero. Where is now located the Hotel Ribera, there was a large gully known as the Barranco de los Alemanes (German’s Gully) given the close location of the German Consulate at the upper part of the 20 de Noviembre street.
In 1853 the city was the most prosperous Tamaulilpas town, it had 487 houses and the Customs, markets municipal houses, the Civil and the Military hospitals, jail, church, theater, bull’s ring, a fort, to military posts, and four large squares. However, these trend will change since from 1854 the people lived the consequences of a political crisis in Mexico that resulted in fights between conservatives and liberals. In the last quarter of Century XIX, the city did not grow over the previous limits, however at the beginning of Century XX potential growth was over the horizon. First new streets were traced on the Gulf and Cascajal lands that were filled to increase their sizes, this new land was renamed Cascajal given the large amount of sea shells found. At the beginning of Century XX at the northeast, following the road of El Volantín, today the Hidalgo Avenue, there were several farms and stables that were the source of the city of farm products and also a place for relaxation for the inhabitants of Tampico. Those were the limits of the city from the Volantin to the school Rural del Monte that laws located over the avenue to the Reforma Street.
Around 1870, the wealthy families from Tampico established at La Barra located where the Pánuco River joins the Gulf of Mexico, several beach houses that they used during summer time, when the train service started in 1891 and a train station modeled after some French designs was built, this place became a residential area very well communicated with large houses inhabited in their majority by U.S. employees from the Railroad company. At the end of the century near Doña Cecilia and Arbol Grande suburbs, several settlements of blue worker families were established, they worked at the recently inaugurated oil refinery, thus the area grew on a large industrial base that in 1924 will segregate from Tampico, the same as La Barra, El Aguila and Miramar when the municipality of Doña Cecilia later renamed Ciudad Madero was created. It was named Doña Cecilia since it was a place property of a lady with that name, in this place there were shipments of people, cargo and cattle. Between 1900 and 1911, the eastern part of the city where the streets of Altamira, Jazmines, Tamaulilpas and Carpintero ended were plagued by irregularities in their levels thus before they were paved needed to be corrected, the same happened with the margins of the Tamesi river, then not inhabited from the Cascajal to the Cortadura Channel. To pave these streets that was the work of a foreign company of Mr. Campbell, landfill from the rivers and great amounts of land from the Andonegui mount and from the place where later the Campbell suburb would be built was taken. Small railroad tracks to carry the landfill were built from the city to the Andonegui mount, named after Coronel Don Juan de Andonegui, who defended the site in several battles before the surrender of the Spanish general brigadier Barradas.
Between 1914 and 1922 the oil activity influenced the physiognomy and growth of the city by the foreign companies. Once the refineries along the Panuco River were built, new settlements took place like Mata Redonda, Arbol Grande, Doña Cecilia and La Barra that kept on growing. These settlements were for engineers and white collar workers that had an adequate planning with good public services and utilities. However, the great mass of blue collar workers that arrived to the city did not have such luxuries neither good housing or money to built them, for this reason they took on empty land where they built small wood houses on high foundations since most of them were built on low lands, mainly the land that was taken from the Tamesí River after the landfill. About the same time of the boom in the city (1914-1922) the foreigners that had sufficient resources leased or bought new homes built on the high grounds that surrounds the Chairel Lagoon becoming soon an upper class residential area. The Volantín Road became an important venue for the expansion of Tampico, becoming the Avenida de los Hombres Ilustres, this avenue became the main communication with the city’s downtown and is today known as the Hidalgo Avenue.
On land surrounding this important avenue, some suburbs for the middle and upper classes started growing as the colonias Jardín, Aragón, Smith, Aurora, Trueba, Recreo and Guadalupe as well as other more elegant and exclusive like Altavista, Aguila and Las Flores where beautiful homes full of comfort surrounded by gardens that after the nationalization of the oil industry were acquired by prominent families of Tampico. To this date, Tampico changed its physiognomy becoming one of the most modern and prosper cities in Mexico that fights every day for its continuous development with modern projects and great infrastructure works.
|
Articles from our 14th Edition Tampico, victim of Pirates, Bucaneers, and Privateers
León Trotsky in Tampico
New Street Names
Tampico Wakeboard City
Tajín Summit
Convention Center
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
