Sosúa got its name from the Sosúa River which flows through this
region. The river ends in Sosúa Bay about 1,400 feet from the
west side of Sosúa beach. The word Sosúa means “worm” in the
native language of the Chibchas, an indigenous culture that
lived predominantly in the northern part of South America. The
Chibchas, Arawak, and other tribes migrated through the Lesser
Antilles, and eventually settled in Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and
Cuba. At the beginning of the 20th Century, the United Fruit
Company established a banana plantation in the sparsely
populated land surrounding Sosúa. Bananas were a highly prized
commodity in the United States, and so big plantations cropped
up in several tropical countries. The United Fruit Company
plantation had over 1.5 million banana trees, and in the year
1900 they exported 230,000 bunches to the United States alone. A
private rail system to transport bananas from the plantations to
Sosúa beach contributed to the development of the banana
industry and to the colonization o