Gracias
Encyclopedia
- This page is about the capital of the Lempira Department. There is also Gracias a Dios department in Honduras.
Honduras
Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...
town/municipality that was founded in 1536, and has a population of approximately 25,000 people (12,000 in the urban center). It is found in the mountainous centre of western Honduras, in the Lempira departamento.
Elevation ranges from roughly 800 meters at the town square to 2,870 meters at the peak of Montaña Celaque (Celaque Mountain, also known as Cerro Las Minas). Climate is greatly influenced by elevation, with the low-lying portions having a wet-dry (monsoonal) pattern. Montaña Celaque is the highest mountain and largest cloud forest
Cloud forest
A cloud forest, also called a fog forest, is a generally tropical or subtropical evergreen montane moist forest characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low-level cloud cover, usually at the canopy level. Cloud forests often exhibit an abundance of mosses covering the ground and...
in Honduras, and is protected through Celaque Mountain National Park.
Gracias serves as a transportation hub for the immediate region. The town is connected to the northern city of Santa Rosa de Copan by a paved 2 lane highway, and construction of a paved 2 lane highway to La Esperanza has been underway for several years.
Agriculture is both subsistence and export based (primarily coffee). Agricultural crops vary with elevation and climate, with corn and beans grown at lower altitudes and fruits/vegetables grown at higher altitudes. Coffee
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...
harvest occurs in November and December.
The development of a tourist economy is seen as a driver of economic development. This tourism is based on the town's historic and natural attractions including colonial churches, Celaque Mountain and hot springs
Hot Springs
Hot Springs may refer to:* Hot Springs, Arkansas** Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas*Hot Springs, California**Hot Springs, Lassen County, California**Hot Springs, Modoc County, California**Hot Springs, Placer County, California...
(aguas termales).
The word gracias means "thank you" in Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
. It is said that upon arriving at the site of the city of Gracias, the Spanish explorers, tired after having trekked through the mountainous terrain, said "Gracias a Dios hemos llegado a tierra plana," meaning "Thank God we have arrived at flat land."
