#cuba #hersheypark #cubahoy The story of this incredible TOWN❗️ THE HERSHEY SUGAR CENTER; AN AMERICAN MIRACLE IN CUBA Milton Hershey bought the hill and part of the plots of land in its vicinity. The place was pure jungle with modest huts and rustic agricultural farms. But while his companions saw Santa Cruz de la Sierra as a virgin scrubland, Hershey saw a thriving industrial community. Immediately after buying the land, he brought from Pennsylvania everything he needed to build a sugar mill and a working-class community around it. The proximity of the port of Santa Cruz del Norte made things easier for him, and very soon the first brigades of construction workers, loggers, stonemasons, architects and engineers entered the area and began to build the first projects of the urbanization. In 1917, the structure of the mill, the foundations of the houses and the railway line of a train were already visible. In 1918, the Hershey Central opened its first phase, and in 1919, Milton Hershey made his first sugar cane mill. In 1920, he milled 149 tons of sugar cane, and in 1926, the sugar refinery was opened. It was so profitable that Hershey had enough sugar to supply the Cuban Coca Cola factories. It is worth stopping to consider the railroad, which would become famous in Cuba, and which is the only one of those facilities still in operation today. Hershey's first trains were steam-powered, but Milton considered them obsolete when electric traction was invented. In 1919, Hershey Ferrocarril Cubano began to import electric trains of the JG Brill and General Electric brands, and became the most modern railroad line in Latin America. The railroad served, first, to transport the construction materials of the new community, and later to transport the raw materials and the workers and inhabitants of the central. Electric passenger service between Matanzas and the town of Hershey was inaugurated in January 1922, and in October of that year it was extended to Casablanca, across the bay from Havana. By 1924 Hershey's railway fleet included modern pantographs for trolley cars, needed to cross the streetcar lines at Regla and Matanzas, 17 electric passenger cars, and 7 electric locomotives. The fare was 47 cents, and only one inspector was needed per train. After the completion of the Hershey mill, Milton purchased the Rosario mill in 1920, the Carmen and San Antonio mills in 1925, and the Jesús María in 1927. Since 1916, his "sugar kingdom" had expanded to include 60,000 acres, five sugar mills, four power plants, and 251 miles of railroad track. For the off-season when there was no harvest, Hershey built a vegetable oil plant and a henequen fiber mill so that his employees would always have work. The housing settlement was designed in Hershey's style and taste, in the image and likeness of his commune in Pennsylvania. They were very comfortable houses with a pronounced American rural style, which Hershey equipped with chimneys, not for heating, but to expel smoke from the kitchens, because humble families cooked with traditional fuels such as coal, firewood and kerosene, which produced smoke during combustion. The Hershey housing complex had two distinct housing areas: the Batey Norte, where the main public services and the houses of the highest social classes were located, and the Batey Sur, which grouped the homes of the common workers and the laborers and apprentices. It included 200 wooden houses with two- and four-pitched roofs and another 50 made of masonry covered with stones and roofs made of Catalan and Creole tiles. They were built with different levels of comfort depending on the category of employees who lived in them. In addition, Milton Hershey built masonry and stone barracks for single men and for foreign laborers with temporary jobs. CHAPTERS 00:00 Hershey the American Town lost in CUBA 01:40 Transportation in the Capital City 03:50 GUANABO Bus Stop 05:24 Buses in CUBA 07:35 Santa Cruz del Norte 09:24 Motorcycle Transportation 09:54 Entrance to Hershey 11:35 American Chalets and Residential Houses 16:18 The Remains of the Sugar Mill 23:06 Old Barracks 24:26 Prices of American Houses 16:50 The Church and Middle Class Houses 29:25 The Ballpark 31:57 Medium and Small Houses in Hershey 32:45 THIS IS WHAT THE HOUSES LOOK LIKE ON THE INSIDE 42:10 The Largest Houses with Netting 43:36 What Life is like in the Ghost Town 45:15 The Old Train Workshops 45:58 Old Hershey Train 48:00 Final