Sosúa

Sosúa is a Dominican municipality in the Puerto Plata province, on the north coast of the country.

Sosúa is a taíno name of the small river (Sosúa River) that crosses the city and ends in the Atlantic Ocean, on the western part of the Sosúa Bay.

Location
The municipality is surrounded by the Espaillat province to the east and to the south, the municipality of Puerto Plata to the west and the municipality of Villa Montellano to the northwest. The Atlantic Ocean is to the north of Sosúa.

Population
The city had, in , a total population of 29,653: 14,796 men and 14,857 women. The urban population was  of the total population.

Geography
Sosúa is along the Sosúa Bay, a small bay with two headlands: to the east is Punta Sosúa ("punta" is a Spanish word that means, in this case, a headland) that was named as Punta Seca ("Dry headland") by Columbus in his first visit to the island; and to the west is Punta Payne, in front of the Sosúa Beach.

The bay is divided in two smaller bays:
The western small bay, or Puerto Chiquito; it is the smaller of the two divisions of the bay and is where the Sosua River ends.
The eastern part, Puerto Grande or commonly named Puerto Sosúa, is larger and it was used as a port in the past; the Sosúa beach is here.

Sosúa has a total area of , about  of the total area of the province of Puerto Plata . The city is about  from the Puerto Plata International Airport.

History
At the beginning of the 20th Century, the United Fruit Company began to grow bananas around the present Sosúa to send the fruits to the United States. The company had over 1.5 million banana plants, and in the year 1900 they sent thousands of fruits to the United States alone. Many people came to live here and to work with the company. United Fruit later closed the Sosúa banana operations in 1916.

Seven hundred and fifty German and Austrian Jews refugees came to the Dominican Republic between 1940 and 1945 to live in Sosúa. Here they created a dairy and cheese factory named "Productos Sosúa" that is still working. When the World War II ended, some of this refugees went to live to United States but many of them stayed in Sosúa.

On March 27, 1958, Sosúa became a Municipal District and later, on August 12, 1978, a municipality.

With the development of tourism in the mid 1980s in the country, Sosúa came to be one of the most important places for tourism in the northern coast.

Administrative division
The municipality of Sosúa has two municipal districts:

+ Municipal districts of Sosúa Code  Municipal district  Population(2010) 180702 Cabarete  14,606 180703  Sabaneta de Yásica  5,334

Economy
Even if agriculture and fishing were very important activities in the past, since the mid 1980s tourism has come to be most important economic activity, with several important hotels in the city and in places near Sosúa and Cabarete.

 References 

Other websites

Sosua Virtual Museum
Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR, and the Jews of Sosúa  by Allen Wells 
Sosúa, Dominican Republic
Records of the Dominican Republic Settlement Association (DORSA) 1939-1977  American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives

Category:Settlements in the Dominican Republic
Category:1978 establishments in North America
Category:1970s establishments in the Dominican Republic