Museo Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo

Permanent exhibits begin with an explanation of the San Quintín Bay, which acquired its current geography during the Pleistocene, a geologic epoch that began about 2.5 million years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago. The display shows the valley's geological formations through photographs of sedimentary and volcaniclastic rocks from the Pleistocene and Holocene, where current urban developments and the agricultural zone are located. It also features examples of marine-origin sedimentary rocks from the Cantil Coastal Formation dating from the Pliocene (roughly 5.3–2.5 million years ago) as well as rocks from the Rosario Formation, from the Late Cretaceous, which began 135 million years ago and ended 65 million years ago. The next section covers fossils found in the region from different geological periods. The most representative and oldest are ammonites, cephalopod mollusks whose coiled shells could reach up to a meter in diameter. It is possible to observe remains of baculites, related to ammonites, which had straight shells. Both mollusks were abundant and diverse during the Cretaceous, when they inhabited the seas around the world. The museum presents a representative sample of these specimens. The tour continues with fossils of various mollusks and invertebrates like snails and clams, common in the surroundings of San Quintín, from different geological eras, which are evidence that the region was once covered by oceans. One section is dedicated to dinosaurs, featuring reconstructions of hadrosaur and albertosaurus specimens, herbivorous and carnivorous respectively. The bones of these specimens were found south of the valley in what is known as El Rosario. This megafauna inhabited the area toward the end of the Cretaceous (65 million years ago), when the region was characterized by a great forest, whose tree trunks are petrified in the surroundings of San Quintín. Another area of the museum addresses the Pleistocene era about 10,000 years ago, when the valley was a region with abundant vegetation and higher humidity, which hosted large mammals such as horses, camels, mastodons and mammoths, among others, some of whose bone remains are on display and a reconstruction of the discovery site. Regarding the first indigenous hunter-gatherer groups who inhabited the San Quintín area 9,000 to 8,000 years before our era, a module explains that these populations were semi-nomadic and carried out daily activities in seasonal camps located along the coast and inland, which allowed them to exploit resources from both environments. The museum also shows a reconstruction of a seasonal camp and some projectile points, among other archaeological materials. A map shows the distribution of the Kiliwas Indigenous groups, these groups of the human language family, inhabited a wide territory extending from the Pacific coast, the Valley of the Trinity (between the Sierra de San Miguel, San Pedro Mártir and the San Felipe desert) and the coast of the Gulf of California, during the period known as Late Prehistory, from about 1,500 years ago until contact with the Spaniards. Today this ethnic group is concentrated in the Arroyo de León community. Finally, a reconstruction of two missions of the entity is presented: Nuestra Señora de El Rosario, founded by the Dominicans in 1773, and Santo Domingo de la Frontera, built in 1775.