Fresh Off The Easel: “The Sunset That Keeps Giving”

 

Original oil painting, art, artist Jeff Love, Rocky Point,

“The Sunset That Keeps Giving” is a 24×30″ oil on canvas fresh off the easel. This is one of the many beautiful sunsets from a favorite vacation spot for many here in the Sonoran Desert, Puerto Penasco, commonly known as “Rocky Point”. The title of this painting comes from the locals in Rocky Point. The sunsets there last for a long time, thus they often speak about how their sunsets keep on giving.

How The Town Was Named:

The city is known by two names, one in English (Rocky Point) and one in Spanish (Puerto Peñasco or “Rocky Port”). In 1826, retired Lt. Robert William Hale Hardy of the British Royal Navy was sailing in this area searching for pearls and precious metals. He named the area Rocky Point and it was identified as Rocky Point on marine maps until President Lázaro Cárdenaschanged it to Puerto Punta Peñasco (Port Rocky Point). To simplify pronunciation, the English name lost the word “Port” and the Spanish name dropped “Punta”.

Puerto Peñasco (O’odham: Geʼe Ṣuidagĭ) is a city and municipality located in the northwest of the Mexican state of Sonora, about 100 km from the border with the U.S. state of Arizona. It is located on the small strip of land that joins the peninsula of Baja California with the rest of Mexico. The area is part of the Altar Desert, one of the driest and hottest of the largerSonora Desert. Because of the lack of water, this area had no permanent settlements until the 1920s. In the 1930s and 1940s, the construction of a rail line connecting Baja to the rest of Mexico passed through here and allowed for the development of a permanent town. For most of its history, the area has been associated with fishing, which is still a major source of income. However, since the 1990s, there has been a push to develop the area for tourism, as it is already heavily visited by people from Arizona and California. Puerto Peñasco is often called “Rocky Point” in English, and has been nicknamed “Arizona’s beach” as it is the coast closest to the major cities of Phoenix, Tucson and Yuma, and many Arizonans spend weekends here.