Baja Republic seeks to celebrate what makes Baja California so distinctive and to raise awareness about this exceptional region in order to better understand it and preserve it for future generations.

In the XVI century, Hernan Cortez and the early European explorers believed that Baja California was an island. Shortly thereafter, Francisco de Ulloa´s expedition confirmed that it was in fact a peninsula, yet the island myth survived in numerous maps well into the XVIII century.

Today we understand that Baja California is a peninsula and that it forms part of Mexico, yet we also sense that Baja, as it is affectionately called, is a place beyond Mexico, or beyond anywhere else for that matter, with a unique spirit and character of its own, virtually an independent country. Metaphorically, Baja continues to be an island, Semper Insula.

Baja is a unique region with breathtaking geography, endemic flora, and fauna. It is surrounded on its Western shores by the Pacific Ocean and on the Eastern by the extraordinary Sea of Cortez. At almost 800 miles, the Baja peninsula is the planet´s second-longest peninsula and a region of uncommon biodiversity.

Originally populated by the native Cochimies, Guaycura and Pericue people which date back to prehistoric times, today, Baja´s population is composed mainly of people of Mexican, American, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, English and French descent. The people of Baja California are a unique breed: independent, resourceful, authentic, unpretentious, down-to-earth, frugal and self-sufficient.

This region, at once rugged and inhospitable and for centuries isolated from civilization, is today more vulnerable than ever and needs to be protected from environmental risk, depletion of species, urban encroachment and from losing that which has made it so extraordinary.

Through its offerings and activities, Baja Republic aims to uphold the spirit of Baja, to create awareness and conscience of its magnificence and vulnerability and to support the existing efforts of like-minded organizations and individuals in order to engage people to embrace this noble cause.