CubaPLUS Magazine

Gardens with history, Hershey

By: CubaPLUS Magazine
Jul 23, 2024
Gardens with history, Hershey

The beautiful Hershey Gardens, very close to the town of Santa Cruz del Norte in the beautiful province of Mayabeque, they contain a great legend, because in that area more than a century ago, the construction of a sugar mill began, the rise of a town and the electric train service, the only one of its kind in Cuba, which linked Havana with the town of Casa Blanca and the province of Matanzas.

05-hershey-2.jpgThis small, but still very picturesque and charming enclave, so many years after its emergence, originated from a sugar mill also named Hershey, in honor of its owner, the American Mr. Milton Hershey. As became customary in Cuba, especially from the beginning of the 20th century, although in the 19th century there were already American owners and large estates on their properties, next to estates of national oligarchs, around the centrals, cornerstones of the Cuban economy, the so-called bateyes were born where administrative employees and workers with a high technical qualification, in a more comfortable section and the poorest in a remote and humble hamlet.

Almost all the bateyes of the largest Creole mills began to flourish like that one from the 1930s, with a marked North American style. But it was natural that Hershey's had the characteristic of a northern hamlet accentuated by its owner. They were built under the advice of American technologists and designers, with homes of fine wood, spacious, very beautiful and comfortable.

The Hershey community had beautiful houses, surrounded by gardens, some with ventilated fireplaces, neat, in a style full of beauty. A peculiarity was also the famous Hershey train, which already from that time yielded an itinerary that made him very well known. Along with the town itself as a relic of the past, of which is still spoken with immense affection.

05-hershey-1.jpgThey say that in 1960, the Central Hershey train became the Camilo Cienfuegos; of the Cuban Railway Division. This was the last electric train line in Cuba and it continued unchanged for the next 40 years. A small highlight is the Hershey Gardens, opened in 1984. With a copious forest and varied fauna irrigated by a river, in a kind of meadow that It fulfilled the pleasant function of a recreational site for workers of the sugar mill. A place flowered, fresh and beautiful that will offer you the splendor of the tropics and Cuban wildlife.

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