Maunabo
At Puerto Rico's southeastern corner, French sugar plantations were destroyed by San Ciriaco (1899) and San Felipe II (1928)—but the 1892 Punta Tuna Lighthouse still stands, a stone survivor in a wooden town.
Maunabo exists at Puerto Rico's southeastern corner—literally the point where Caribbean meets Atlantic—and its history is written in repeated destruction and stubborn rebuilding. Founded in 1799 with just 712 residents (180 enslaved), the settlement clung to the Río Maunabo, trading through a primitive wooden port built in 1812 that storms destroyed and residents rebuilt, destroyed and rebuilt.
French planters arrived in the 1840s and established sugar haciendas with names that revealed their origins: Garonne, Bordelaise, Orleanaise. These plantations ran on enslaved labor until abolition, then struggled until Hurricane San Ciriaco devastated them in 1899. The response was consolidation: three competing families merged into the Central Columbia Sugar Company (1901-1929), industrializing production to survive. The factory closed during the Depression; sugar never returned.
What endured is the Punta Tuna Lighthouse, built 1892 at the island's southeasternmost promontory. Its third-order light connected Puerto Rico's southern and eastern navigation systems for ships rounding the corner. San Ciriaco damaged it in 1899; the town was nearly destroyed. San Felipe II struck in 1928; the town's housing was 'nearly totally destroyed' while the lighthouse stood. Hurricane Maria hit in 2017; vegetation fell, facades cracked, but the light persisted. The lighthouse has survived every storm since its construction because stone and engineering can withstand what wooden ports and sugar economies cannot.
Modern Maunabo—'La Ciudad Calma,' the Calm City—runs on truck farming, cattle, fishing, and the tourism that the transferred lighthouse brings. By 2026, the question is whether 'calm' describes resilience or resignation, and whether the next hurricane proves the pattern once more.