Once a small fishing village, today, San Felipe is a thriving community of more than 20,000 permanent residents, with an additional 10,000 from the United States, Canada and Europe. The town is of sufficient size that a significant variety of goods and services are now available.
The local San Felipe people are friendly and very tolerant of the many outsiders that come into town each year. The residents also actively support the same kinds of community recreation that we are used to in the United States. There are ball fields, basketball courts, a swimming pool, and soccer fields. There are churches of different denominations. You will also find doctors, dentists, engineers, and lawyers. With San Felipe's proximity to the USA border, and the new developments of El Dorado Ranch and the San Felipe Beach Club and La Ventana del Mar, this area is rapidly becoming a very desirable, yet affordable vacation resort community.
The Malecon
The snowbird residents are active and involved in the community through various civic organizations. There are numerous recreational and social pursuits to fuel an active retirement lifestyle. Life is so comfortable here that many transplants now consider San Felipe their main home.
Digital telephone service is provided by Telnor (the high technology division of Telmex) and cellular telephone by Baja Cellular and TelCel. The Net offers dial-up and walk in connectivity to the internet. There are also two different mail services that cross the border to check the regular mail. Multiple Pemex stations that have unleaded gas in both regular and high octane, including the new station at El Dorado Ranch. In addition one station has diesel. There is a propane plant to refill portable tanks as well as tankers to refill large tanks at your home. There are also numerous lumber yards and hardware stores as well as auto part stores, grocery stores, furniture stores, and clothing stores. In short almost everything most people think they need can be found here without the need for a drive back across the border.
Explore our website and learn more about our town, and if you have any questions please contact us:
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SAN FELIPE'S ECOSYSTEM
The
Great Sonora Desert encompasses a large and diverse
subtropical region extending from the west coast of
Baja California to the western flank of Mexico's Sierra
Madre Mountains. Within this vast expanse, the area
surrounding San Felipe (an area of transition between
the Lower Colorado River Section and the Vizcaino
Desert Section) was determined to be sufficiently
unique to enable its identification as The San Felipe
Desert.
Many mountain ranges lie within the San Felipe Desert. The most prominent of which is the Sierra San Pedro Martír. This range, which is the tallest in Baja forms the western boundary of our desert.
The terrain varies from relatively flat sandy brush land to incredibly rugged almost impassable canyons.
With some areas receiving as little as 3 cm of annual rain, many unique plants have chosen to call this area home. The most impressive has to be the Cardon cactus. These are the largest cactus in the world and the San Felipe Desert is the northern most extent of their range. While many of these plants have spines or smell and taste bad they also have brightly hued blossoms that attract lots of birds.
Birds are not the only animals that live here either. There are lots of bugs, insects, and reptiles as would be expected. But there are also coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions, mountain sheep, and vicious cholla chomping jackrabbits.
While deserts tend to appear as rather bleak places, they are an ecosystem literally full of diverse life forms. Even the dry sandy earth forms an alliance with algae and lichens to create what we know as a cryptogramic soil.
The San Felipe Desert is a highly varied and very unique ecosystem. It only takes a short time to fall in love with it. You can spend a lifetime discovering it.
Hopefully the links above and the rest of this site will pique your interest, or allay any fears you might have, about visiting this exciting community and making this your "home away from home."
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