Kino Bay Chronicle

Kino Bay "Discovered" Again

The late Mireya Walker, a Club member who lived, until her death in 1995, at Las Toninas with her husband Brown, who built the condominiums, first came to Kino Bay in 1943. She drove out with friends from Hermosillo on a land-buying trip. It took all day to make the trip in a truck, she recalled. When they saw how beautiful the beaches were, they decided to extend their visit and explore more of the area, sleeping in bedrolls on the sand.

Mireya came back some years later and lived, for a time, in a lone trailer near what is now the Caverna Trailer Park -- perhaps the first trailerite in an area now served by several such parks.

The day Mireya saw her first Seri Indian is one she always remembered. While swimming one warm summer day, she was attacked by a jellyfish which attached itself to her head and neck.

As she was threshing around trying to rid herself of the creature, she saw an Indian woman running toward her with a knife in her hand. Mireya wondered if she was about to be attacked by the Seri but was in such pain she didn't much care.

But the Seri pried off the jellyfish, threw her knife down and began scrubbing Mireya's face and neck with wet sand. She rinsed the area with salt water and scrubbed again, until the skin was raw. She then reached into the folds of her long skirt and produced a lime. Cutting it in half, she rubbed the juice into Mireya's painful wounds.

When the pain began to abate, the Indian woman helped Mireya back to her trailer, patted her on the shoulder, waved good- bye and disappeared. Needless to say, Mireya always thereafter had a soft spot in her heart for the Seris.

By the mid-1940's, commercial fishing in Kino Bay had dropped off somewhat and three of the four fishing cooperatives moved away. It is in this period that we found our first reports of visits by American sport fishermen although there were undoubtedly earlier instances.

Bob Jarratt, one of the founders and president of Club Deportivo from 1980 through 1984, came here with friends over the poor road from Hermosillo in 1949. They camped on the beach where the road ended, near present-day Islandia Marina. At first they fished in the surf but later found a Mexican panga fisherman who would take them out to waters around Alcatraz.

Bob recalls that they had no bait until the Mexican produced a small stick of dynamite, lit it from his cigarette, and tossed it overboard. They then had plenty of bait but their light tackle was no match for the huge fish which began to bite.

They soon lost all their tackle and still had no fish. The next trip, with heavier gear, they had fishing beyond their greatest expectations. "We never went beyond Alcatraz; we didn't have to."

In February 1959, the Christsens camped where the
Islandia Marina RV Park is located today

Dan came to Kino because, in the early 1950's while fishing in Florida coastal waters, a fishing guide asked why he came so far (from New Mexico) to fish in Florida when there was such great fishing nearer home in the Sea of Cortez.

Tom Crutchfield, another of the Club's founders and member of its first Board, came to Kino Bay with his wife Gretchen in 1957. He was a fisheries technician from California, sent here to investigate commercial fishing potentials and to advise fishermen on improved methods. The Crutchfields returned in 1971 to buy a home in Old Kino adjacent to the Islandia Marina "because the weather is better there".

The first piped water reached Old Kino in 1959 but was sold at first by the barrel. In 1963, the first part of an electrical supply system was installed and the water system was expanded.

Maria Horton, daughter of the late Tiburcio Saucedo, remembers coming from Hermosillo with her family in 1960 to a tract of land they had obtained on the beach. Roy Kinsey, long-time Club member, had camped on that beach seven years earlier and is still a resident of the Islandia Marina RV Park which the Saucedo family established there.

The Saucedos saw the opportunity to accommodate the growing numbers of Americans coming with their boats and trailers. Maria remembers helping to haul rocks from nearby hills to build a boat ramp. They installed other improvements for trailers and even kept a few barrels of gasoline to sell. They hauled fresh water for their customers from farms inland until the town's water system was installed.

It was an ideal location for a trailer park. After the ramp was installed, it became a popular place for visiting fishermen. Today Maria and her family still operate the RV park as well as a commercial water purification plant.

Before electric lines were installed across it, Guaymas Street in Old Kino, leading toward Islandia Marina, was used as a landing strip by fishermen who flew in. Veda Tucker's father, the late R. H. "Coke" Hedgecoke, was one of these. He and Bill Tucker often landed there, as well as on a beach on Tiburon where they kept a small boat.

After electric wires across the street ended its use as a landing strip, and before today's airport was developed, another strip was bladed out between the Caverna and today's north ramp. That is now a road.