Arenal Volcano History

La Fortuna of San Carlos is part of this natural paradise that we call Costa Rica. Surrounded by a resplendent flora and fauna and embellished by the majestic and powerful Arenal Volcano, this is a jewel for sharing with the rest of the world. The tourism is the principal source of work in the zone, but it wasn’t always like this way. Before the colossus awakened it was known for been a hill and the community had a different economical activity and it was not based on tourism, La Fortuna was populated by just a few families and it was dedicated to agriculture and cattle raising.

Later, alter five hundred years of inactivity on July 29th 1968 the Arenal Hill or “Sugar Bread” exploited burying the town of Pueblo Nuevo and affecting the town of Tabacón and many others in a perimeter of 4 km. According to many survivors one day before the explosion there was an uncountable amount of quakes and an uncomfortable heat, even for the dawn in the morning of the 29th the quakes won’t stop and finally between 7 and 8 in the morning it exploited. The explosion opened three craters. From three crates, volcanic material came out. In just one minute the territory and the people around the volcano were burned because of the gases and incandescent rocks with temperatures between 1.000 and 8.000 degrees Celsius. The people died burned or melted by the caloric wave that the eruptions produced.

Some of the bodies were found hours later with their skin with hot plastic texture. The estimation of the dead people it was between 80 and 100 victims. The wind spread all the ashes to Tilaran town affecting the entire resident and their animals, also the virgin forest was completely destroyed, and all the pastures and crops suffered a lot of damage.

Two days later, July 31st of 1968 a second explosion happened and it reached a group of volunteers which came from Ciudad Quesada town to help on the emergency. The first cone was active until 1973, after that, the volcanic activity immigrated to the last cone and nowadays it has the activity. The accumulation of material it has increased the cones, and nowadays two cones share the same crater.
Certainly you could say that the Arenal Volcano is the main attraction of the zone, but there are additional attraction. The Arenal Lake is one example which is a lake artificially made after the construction of a dam in 1979 taking advantage of a small lake with the same name. This caused the complete flooding of the towns of Arenal Viejo and Tronadora and the government has to relocate 2500 people to a new town. This lake is cataloged between the five best places in the world for windsurf, the lake is import for tourism in La Fortuna, and for the whole country as well because it is the biggest electric generation project in Costa Rica and nowadays it produces around 363.410 KW of hydroelectric energy for a big part of the country. In addition it also supplies of drinkable water to the communities.
With not doubt the eruption of the volcano caused big social-economical changes in la Fortuna, a proof of this is the implementation of tourism in the zone and the enormous increase. At the beginning the people saw the volcano as a dangerous risk but slowly they began to change their mine and they started to see it as a great tourist attraction.
According to the Costa Rican Institute of Tourism the area of La Fortuna appears as an important touristic site until the second half of the decade of the 1990, more of the 85% of the tourists visiting the country went to this area.

Source: Arenal Manoa Hotel