This hacienda is the location where the Battle of Santa Rosa took place, an encounter between William Walker’s filibusters and the Costarican civil army. Walker was in Nicaragua looking to conquer the Central American provinces. In 1856, Costa Rica’s president Juan Rafael Mora Porras declared war on Nicaragua. He asked civilians to join him on the battlefield. The commute from the capital to Guanacaste was an eight-day trek, from March 4th to March 12th. By March 20th, the army arrived at the hacienda, surrounded the filibusters, and forced them to surrender. The…
