In 1833, Salvador de Vives, a Spaniard who emigrated from Venezuela to Puerto Rico, purchased an 87-acre farm in the hills north of Ponce. Hacienda Buena Vista, as it came to be known, sits in a subtropical forest near the Caños River. The hacienda soon became a major producer of coffee, as well as corn, bananas, pineapple, oranges, and cacao. Salvador’s son and grandson installed a Barker’s mill powered by a nearby 60-foot waterfall,...

Techno-Archeology is a field of research into the history and archeology of technology and engineering. This is my term for this new field, as I have not yet found an “official” term for this discipline. I use the term technology very loosely here, and include all kinds of technologies, not only mechanical devices. I have been interested in technology and history my whole life, and it has always bothered me that school books and the...