Arroyo

Introducing Arroyo

On the southeast corner of the island, Arroyo is a drowsy beach town with a curious history, a place which seems to have dozed off shortly after the rein of ‘king sugar’ and never quite woke up. It’s the first town on the south coast of interest to travelers heading clockwise along the island from San Juan, and typical of many of the seaside bergs in the area, with economies that hobble along though a trickle of tourism and small commercial fishing industries. The dusty main drag, Calle Morse, passes 19th-century structures and salt-beaten wooden homes with sagging tin roofs and shuttered windows, eventually ending at the still, blue Caribbean.

Like the regional hub of Ponce, Arroyo was a rough-and-tumble smugglers’ port during the colonial days, when New England sea captains and Caribbean traders built many of the slouching wooden houses that still stand. Arroyo’s early notoriety came when American Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph, installed communication lines here in 1848. This event put Arroyo on the map and made Morse a local hero; they named the main street after him and sing about him in the town’s anthem.

Entering the village from Hwy 3 to Calle Morse, you’ll notice that the upside of Arroyo’s isolation is a lack of modern commercial development – there’s not a Burger King in sight. Still, little effort and money is spent on preserving its inherent historical charm. The nearby Tren del Sur, which was the last working railway on the island, sits just up the road in a rusting heap, with whispers of a (unlikely) renovation floating about town.

Last updated: Oct 20, 2009