Oct 092024
 
Chapala owes much to multi-talented architect Guillermo de Alba

Despite not being a native of Chapala, Guillermo de Alba (1874–1935) left a diverse and rich legacy in the city. De Alba was born in Mexico City. After his family moved to Guadalajara, de Alba attended the Escuela Libre de Ingenieros, from which he graduated as an Ingeniero Topógrafo (engineer-surveyor) in 1895. [At that time […]

Oct 032024
 
Count Giuseppe Antona visited Lake Chapala in the 1890s

What was Italian Count Giuseppe Antona doing at Lake Chapala in 1895? Shooting as many teal ducks as possible! And he wrote all about it for The Detroit Free Press. “Shooting Teal Duck at Lake Chapala.” (The Detroit Free Press, 3 March 1895, 11.) – pdf Who was Giuseppe Antona? Count Alessandro Giuseppe (sometimes Guiseppe) […]

Sep 262024
 
Herbert Johnson's photos: Ajijic and area (1940s)

Herbert Johnson (1877-1960) and his wife, Georgette (1893-1975), settled in Ajijic in December 1939. Shortly after Herbert died in Ajijic in 1960, Georgette returned to live in the UK. These photographs come from a photo album that once belonged to Georgette. For the story of its rediscovery by historian Dr Kimberly Lamay Licursi in an […]

Sep 192024
 
Travel writer Ernest Bilbrough went waterbird shooting at Lake Chapala in the 1880s

Though E. Ernest Bilbrough (1861-1891) died tragically young, he certainly had some adventures before departing this world. One of the three children born to Thomas Priestley Bilbrough and his wife, Gertrude Elizabeth Bates, Edward Ernest Bilbrough was born in Liverpool, UK, on 6 March 1861. Details of his education are unknown, but he became a […]

Sep 122024
 
The artists who contributed to Amigos de Salud fundraising giftcards

Author and social activist Joan Frost, a resident of Jocotepec, was the leader of a group of friends who co-founded Amigos de Salud in 1974. That year, the group organized the sale of hand-colored greetings cards to raise funds for medicines for the Centro de Salud in Jocotepec, which was due to open 1 January […]

Sep 052024
 
How reliable is the history in “The History of Lakeside,” published in 2001?

Making the rounds periodically on social media—and still prominent in web searches more than twenty years after it was written—the late Lawrence H. Freeman’s piece titled “The History of Lakeside” is, unfortunately, riddled with historical misconceptions and inaccuracies. The full text of the article is available on chapala.com and was recently reprinted on another Chapala-related […]

Aug 282024
 
Painter and sculptor Daphne Aluta lived in Ajijic in the 1970s and 1980s

Artist Daphne Aluta (1919-2017) moved to Ajijic with her then husband Mario Aluta in the late 1960s, and lived there for about twenty years. In September 1985 she was the first female artist ever to have her work featured in the Chapala area monthly El Ojo del Lago; all previous art profiles had highlighted male […]

Aug 222024
 
Leland H. Ives visited Chapala in about 1904

In 1905 keen traveler Leland Ives published an article about Chapala in Four Track News, a periodical begun a few years earlier by the New York Central Railroad. The short article contains a memorable description of his stage coach ride from Atequiza to Chapala, and all manner of valuable nuggets of information which indicate Ives […]

Aug 152024
 
Chapala Wishful Thinking #3: Fishing fleet?

This is the third in a mini series identifying some examples of photo identification errors related to the Lake Chapala area. Mexico’s National Photo Archive (Fototeca Nacional) includes this unattributed photo of ships and boats on Lake Chapala captioned as “Lago de Chapala, Jalisco, 1925-1930.” The photo was used in an internal 2004 INAH newsletter […]

Aug 082024
 
Isidoro Pulido helped many of the greats of Chapala

One remarkable Chapala man, Isidoro Pulido, had close links to several of the most important writers and artists ever to live and work at Lake Chapala. Isidoro was put in jail at the behest of English novelist D. H. Lawrence; he was befriended and employed by American poet Witter Bynner and taught to create near-perfect […]

Aug 012024
 
Canadian photographer Jackie Hartley and her images of Jocotepec in the 1980s

Canadian teacher, photographer and social activist Jean (‘Jackie’) Hartley lived in Jocotepec for several years at the start of the 1980s. She is still remembered in the Lake Chapala area today because she and a friend, Roma Jones, co-founded the Lakeside School for the Deaf, now the School for Special Children, located in Jocotepec: In […]

Jul 252024
 
Did James Michener ever visit Lake Chapala?

The very famous American author James Michener (1907-1997) wrote more than forty books, of varying quality, in his lengthy writing career, including Mexico, a sweeping historical novel published in 1992. He began writing Mexico in 1961, but then abandoned the idea (or the manuscript was lost, depending on who’s telling the story) for about thirty […]

Jul 182024
 
Charles Betts Waite, one of Mexico's most important pre-revolutionary photographers

Why has it taken me so long to write about U.S.-born photographer C. B. Waite and his important contribution to documenting Mexico at the start of the twentieth century? The main challenge has been to unravel the discrepancies and inconsistencies in most previous accounts of his life and work. So, before examining Waite’s major contributions […]

Jul 182024
 
Who gets the credit? Charles Betts Waite or Winfield Scott?

Mexico’s National Photo Archive (Fototeca Nacional) combines the work of two photographers—Winfield Scott (1863-1942) and Charles Betts Waite (1861-1927)—into a single collection titled “C.B. Waite / W. Scott.” The two men did have several things in common: of similar age, both were prominent US-born photographers working in Mexico at the start of the twentieth century; […]

Jul 112024
 
Temple Manning described Chapala in 1944

I recently came across a short, but interesting, piece describing Chapala in the mid-1940s. I currently know nothing about its author, Temple Manning, beyond the longevity of their syndicated byline, first used in the 1920s and still going strong in the 1960s. Here are a few excerpts from Manning’s description of “Chapala — A Mexican […]

Jul 042024
 
Ajijic in the 1970s: the photos of Beverly Johnson

Ajijic’s unofficial photographer in the early 1970s was free-spirited Beverly Johnson (1933-1976), one of the many people who helped make Ajijic tick in what old timers still remember as the ‘good old days.’ Beverly and her five young children moved to Mexico in the early 1960s and settled in Ajijic, where she hoped to eke […]

Jun 292024
 
Canadian artists and authors associated with Lake Chapala

For Canadians, who celebrate 1 July as Canada Day, here is a list of Canadian artists and authors who have historical connections to Lake Chapala and who have been profiled on this site. Enjoy! Visual artists Henry Sandham (1842-1910), a well-known Canadian illustrator of the time, illustrated Charles Embree‘s historical novel, A Dream of a […]

Jun 272024
 
Poet and children's author Emily Huntington Miller stayed at Lake Chapala in 1911

Prolific author Emily Huntington was born on 22 October 1833 in Brooklyn, Connecticut, and died on 2 November 1913. Though Wikipedia claims that she died in Mexico City, contemporaneous newspapers make it clear that she died of heart trouble at her home in St. Paul, Minnesota, a few days after her eightieth birthday. Huntington, who […]

Jun 202024
 
Lake Chapala on a postcard: Jacob Kalb and the Iturbide Curio Store

At the start of the twentieth century, Jacob Kalb, a Jewish immigrant of Austrian ancestry, owned and operated the Iturbide Curio Store in downtown Mexico City. The store, selling all manner of Mexican tourist souvenirs and mementoes, opened in 1903 on the ground floor of the Hotel Iturbide. The hotel occupied the historic Palacio de […]

Jun 132024
 
New Orleans poet Mary Ashley Townsend owned Villa Montecarlo in Chapala in the 1890s

In the mid-1890s, New Orleans poet Mary Ashley Townsend, born in 1832, and her husband, Gideon, became, almost certainly, the first American couple to own property in the town of Chapala—and they didn’t even have to pay for it, because it was a gift from their eldest daughter, Cora. Mary Ashley and Gideon lived in […]

Jun 062024
 
Dating early photos of Chapala stagecoaches (diligencias)

Before the advent of trains and motor vehicles, the only way to get to Lake Chapala was to walk, ride or take a stagecoach (diligencia). The first regular Guadalajara–Chapala stagecoach service began in 1866. While the trip could be done in ten hours, it usually took twelve or more, and the mix of excitement, speed, […]

May 302024
 
Ajijic's Cerro del Aguila: the story of the Ajijic Eagle

Though I didn’t realize it at the time, a photo I took of Ajijic in 1980 (below) shows, almost precisely in the middle, the bare hillside known as Cerro del Aguila (“Hill of the Eagle”) or Cerro Colorado (“Colored Hill”). According to a local legend, the hillside was formed during the centuries-long migration of the […]

May 232024
 
Canadian artist Leonard Brooks, one of many links between San Miguel de Allende and Lake Chapala

Canadian artist Frank Leonard Brooks (1911-2011), usually known simply as Leonard Brooks, was a painter and textile artist who made his home in San Miguel de Allende for more than fifty years. He and his wife, Reva, a photographer, occasionally visited Chapala, but never for any extended period of time. It was something of a […]

May 162024
 
Artists and authors who searched for idols at Lake Chapala

Many artists and authors have visited Lake Chapala in search of, or in homage to, their literary or artistic idols. But what about those who have also spent time collecting ancient stone and pottery idols and artifacts? There are far more members of this latter group than I first thought. The first academic report of […]

Apr 252024
 
1980: My first glimpses of Lake Chapala

Unlike most of my writing, this is a very personal post. It was 1980—and I was in my mid-twenties—when I first saw Lake Chapala. I was only there a few hours, took a few photos, and was not overly impressed. It was to be several years before I revisited. What I hadn’t realized, until quite […]

Apr 182024
 
Álvaro Ochoa Serrano's history of "La Ciénega de Chapala"

When not writing about mariachi, historian Dr Álvaro Ochoa Serrano has dedicated much of his life to writing about Lake Chapala. His latest book, titled La Ciénega de Chapala, published in 2023, is an extraordinarily well-researched account of the history of the eastern end of Lake Chapala, told through four detailed and elegantly written case […]

Apr 112024
 
Lake Chapala on a postcard: Juan Aráuz Lomeli

Juan Aráuz Lomeli (ca 1887-1970) is known to have taken photos of Chapala from the 1920s onward. The somewhat unusual surname Aráuz or Arauz—the accent is optional—is of Basque origin. Though not a full-time professional photographer, Juan Aráuz Lomeli stamped “ARAUZ – FOT.” and an address in Guadalajara on the reverse of the photos he […]

Apr 042024
 
1940 book celebrated ‘modern’ highway along south shore of Lake Chapala

In the late 1930s the government of President Lázaro Cardenas financed the completion of a paved highway from Mexico City to Guadalajara via Toluca, Morelia and Jiquilpan (Cardenas’s birthplace). To commemorate the first part, Mexico City to Morelia, author and art historian Pedro Ceuleneer de Gante was commissioned to write a short guidebook illustrated by […]