Río Portugués is a river in the municipality of Ponce, Puerto Rico. In the 19th century, it was also known as Río de Ponce.Eli D. Oquendo-Rodriguez. Pablo L. Crespo-Vargas, editor. A Orillas del Mar Caribe: Boceto historico de la Playa de Ponce - Desde sus primeros habitantes hasta principios del siglo XX. First edition. June, 2017. Editorial Akelarre. Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones del Sur Oeste de Puerto Rico (CEISCO). Lajas, Puerto Rico. Page 55. Government of the Municipality of Ponce. Periodico "El Señorial". Special issue: Carnaval Ponceño 2013. February 2013. Page 17. Ponce, Puerto Rico. Twenty-one bridges for motor vehicle traffic span Río Portugués in the municipality of Ponce alone.National Bridge Inventory Data: Puerto Rico, Ponce. James Baughn. BridgeReports.com 2018. Accessed 7 March 2018. The river is also known as Río Tibes in the area where it flows through barrio Tibes in the municipality of Ponce.Government of the Autonomous Municipality of Ponce. Recursos Naturales. Ponce Ciudad Señorial. Retrieved 21 November 2011. Río Portugués has a length of nearly and runs south from the Cordillera Central mountain range into the Caribbean Sea. The Portugués is one of the best-known rivers in Ponce because of its prominent zigzagging through the city and its historical significance.Sunny A. Cabrera Salcedo. Hacia un Estudio Integral de la Toponimia del Municipio de Ponce, Puerto Rico. Ph. D. dissertation. May 1999. University of Massachusetts Amherst. Graduate School. Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Page 49. The river is historically significant because the city of Ponce had its origins on its banks. It was originally known as Río Baramaya (Baramaya River).Ponce, Puerto Rico. Arecibo Web. Retrieved 18 January 2010. It has its mouth at . This river is one of the 14 rivers in the municipality.
Origin Río Portugués has its origin in Cerro Guilarte,Las Fiestas Populares de Ponce y La Villa de Ponce. Ramon Marin. 1875. Ponce, Puerto Rico: Imprenta El Vapor. 72 pages. (Reprinted September 1994. San Juan, Puerto Rico: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico. 281 pages. Page 187.) Retrieved 23 July 2012. located the western part of barrio Portugués in the bordering municipality of Adjuntas,Los ríos y embalses de Adjuntas. Obed David Cintrón González. just north of Ponce, and drains into the Caribbean Sea after running for some .Río Portugués. PRFrogui. The river has a discharge of 16,000 feet3/second.Ferdinand Quiñones and Karl G. Johnson. The Floods of May 17–18, 1985 and October 6–7, 1985 in Puerto Rico. U.S. Geological Survey. Open File Report 87-123. Prepared in Conjunction with the Puerto Rico Department of Natural Resources, Puerto Rico Environmental Quality Board, and the Puerto Rico Highway Authority. San Juan, Puerto Rico. 1987. Page 8. The toponymy, or origin of the name, comes from one of its first settlers, Pedro Rodríguez de Guzman, known as el Portugués ("the Portuguese") because his ancestry was from Portugal.Government of the Municipality of Ponce. Periodico "El Señorial". Special issue: Carnaval Ponceño 2013. February 2013. Page 17. Ponce, Puerto Rico.Another source names this early settler "Pedro Perdomo de Guzmán". It is not clear which of the two names is the correct name, or if his name was perhaps Pedro Rodriguez Perdomo de Guzmán or some other variation. See . Rafael Torrech San Inocencio. El Sur a la Vista. Ponce, Puerto Rico. Elsuralavista.com. 14 February 2010.
Tributaries
Río Chiquito is one of the tributaries of Río Portugués (i.e., Río Chiquito feeds into Río Portugués).Estudios Sociales. Ponce, Puerto Rico: Hidrografia. Projecto Salon Hogar. Retrieved August 8, 2009. In the sectors and sub-barrios that it traverses, the locals call the river by the name of such sector/barrio. Thus names such as Río Cedro, Río Nuez, Río Moscada, and Río Tibes as the unofficial local name of Río Portugués in the sectors known as Cedro, Nuez, Moscada and Tibes.Ponce, Puerto Rico. Jorge A. Figueroa Irizarry, Director. Ponce History Museum. Released by Professor F. Suarez. Pontificial Catholic University of Puerto Rico. Page 25.
Course of the river Starting at its origin in Barrio Portugués, Adjuntas, Río Portugués, as it is known locally, begins to form at an altitude of approximately 2,853 feet (870 m) above sea level.PRFROFUI. RÍOS MAS IMPORTANTES DE PUERTO RICO. The river then runs in a southerly direction parallel to PR-10 for most of its trajectory, crossing barrios Guaraguao, San Patricio, and Tibes. It brushes barrio Machuelo Arriba on its southwestern corner after it crosses PR-10 just west of the intersection of PR-10 and PR-504, immediately north of the Ponce city limits. From there it enters barrio Machuelo Abajo and continues south crossing Avenida Betances/Avenida Tito Castro (PR-14), at a point about half a mile west of the intersection of routes PR-12 and PR-14. A few hundred feet before the Avenida Betances bridge over Río Portugués in the city of Ponce, the river divides barrios Sexto, located west of the river, and Machuelo Abajo, to the east. It continues south crossing Calle Guadalupe, at which point it divides barrio Quinto to the west and Machuelo Abajo to the east. This point is just west of Club Deportivo de Ponce. Several hundred feet further downstream, at Miguel Pou Boulevard–PR-1 and Puente de los Leones–Tricentennial Park, the river divides barrios Tercero and San Antón. Further downstream, the river runs immediately west of La Ceiba Park on Calle Comercio (route PR-133) in sector Cuatro Calles. After crossing Calle Comercio, Río Portugués divides barrios Cuarto and San Anton, and continues its southerly course towards Avenida Las Américas (PR-163).
The following table summarizes the course of the river in terms of roads crossed. Roads are listed as the river flows from its origin in Ponce's Barrio Guaraguao in the north to the Caribbean Sea in the south (N/A = Data not available):
No. Barrio Road Road'skm marker NBI IDNational Bridge Inventory Data: Puerto Rico, Ponce. James Baughn. BridgeReports.com 2018. Accessed 25 November 2018. Bridge name (if any) Direction (of bridge traffic) Coordinates Notes1Guaraguao PR-10 19.1 025961 Unnamed Both 0.5 km N of PR-5152San PatricioCamino Soñadora Bridge, Barrio San Patricio, Ponce, Puerto Rico, at OpenStreetMap. PR-10 14.8 N/A Unnamed Both 0.3 km E of PR-10, on Camino Soñadora3Tibes PR-503 N/A N/A Unnamed Both 0.1 km N of Camino Robles; Bridge obliterated by the Portugues Dam4Tibes PR-503 N/A 004901 Unnamed Both At entrance to Camino Pastillo; Bridge obliterated by the Portugues Dam5Tibes PR-10 N/A N/A Unnamed Both 0.1 km S of PR-503 in Central Barrio Tibes; Bridge obliterated by the Portugues Dam6Tibes PR-10 9.3 023261 Unnamed Both Just north-northwest of Centro Ceremonial Indígena de Tibes in Southern Barrio Tibes7Portugués Rural PR-10 6.9 026711 Unnamed Both between PR-503 and PR-5048Portugués Rural PR-504 0.1 022481 Unnamed Both 0.1 km east of PR-503, in Barrio Cantera9Machuelo Abajo PR-14 2.0 018521 Unnamed Both PR-14 is aka Ave. Tito Castro in this area (aka, Ave. Betances)10Cantera PR-14R 1.7 022061 La Milagrosa Both PR-14 is aka Calle Guadalupe in this area11Tercero PR-1 126.9 019221 Los Leones Both 0.5 km east of Plaza Las Delicias12San Antón PR-133 1.2 018561 Unnamed Both At Parque de la Ceiba13San Antón Calle Campos Street has no km markers 018021 Unnamed Both At east end of Calle Campos, in comunidad Bélgica14San Anton PR-163 1.0 010852 Unnamed WB At Av. Las Américas, east of Hospital Dr. Pila15San Antón PR-163 1.0 010862 Unnamed EB At Av. Las Américas, east of Hospital Dr. Pila16San Antón PR-12 3.6 018921 Unnamed Both Av. Santiago de los Caballeros/Av. Malecón, between Av. Las Américas and Ponce By-pass. PR-12 used to be signed PR-14 in this area 17San Antón PR-2 229.0 015941 Unnamed Both Ponce By-pass 0.4 km east of PR-1218San Antón PR-52 103.7 022691 Unnamed Both Flows as Río Bucaná19Playa Av. Caribe N/A N/A Unnamed Both Flows as Río Bucaná20Playa PR-2 227.7 005841 Caracoles Both Ponce By-pass, between Av. Hostos and Plaza del Caribe; This was part of the former course of the river21Playa PR-123 3.3 001451 Río Portugués Both Av. Hostos just south of Ponce By-pass; This was part of the former course of the river22Playa PR-585 2.4 002751 Unnamed Both Av. Padre Noel by Villa Pesquera; This was part of the former course of the river
Former and current course For flood control purposes, in the 1970s Río Portugués was diverted by the U.S. Corps of Engineers from emptying directly into the Caribbean Sea at Playa de Ponce to feeding into the Río Bucaná which then empties into the Caribbean Sea. This channelization project started in 1974Carmelo Rosario Natal. Ponce En Su Historia Moderna: 1945-2002. Published by Secretaría de Cultura y Turismo of the Government of the Autonomous Municipality of Ponce. Ponce, Puerto Rico. 2003. p. 118. and was completed in 1997.Proyecto de año: Represa Portugues, Construccion con Ingenieria Extrema. Planos y Capacets. May–Jun 2011. Page 10. Retrieved 28 September 2012. It was a multimillion-dollar investment, with just the first phase costing $120 million.Carmelo Rosario Natal. Ponce En Su Historia Moderna: 1945-2002. Published by Secretaría de Cultura y Turismo of the Government of the Autonomous Municipality of Ponce. Ponce, Puerto Rico. 2003. p. 118.
Former course The former course of Río Portugués, prior to being diverted and channelized by the U.S. Corps of Engineers in the 1970s, followed from the area just north of Avenida Las Américas/PR-163Inauguran la nueva Represa Portugues en Ponce. Antonio R. Gómez. Primera Hora. 5 February 2014. Accessed 21 November 2018.Inauguran la Represa Portugués en Ponce: La nueva estructura protegerá a 40,000 residentes contra inundaciones. El Nuevo Dia. 5 February 2014. Accessed 21 November 2018. in a south-southwesterly fashion crossing Avenida Las Américas immediately east of Hospital Dr. Pila. It then continued south behind the Governmental Center/Puerto Rico Police Ponce Area headquarters, and followed a trajectory almost parallel to Avenida Hostos (PR-123, formerly PR-10). It then crossed PR-2 immediately east of the intersection of Avenida Hostos and Ponce Bypass/PR-2, at the sector called "Caracoles". From there the river used to continue flowing southerly, at one point just edging the area where Plaza del Caribe now stands. This old course then took a sharp westerly turn and crossed Avenida Hostos, at the now historic Puente Río Portugués. From this point it continued running south-southwesterly where it (now, since the newly built PR-52) crossed PR-52. From here the river flowed another one mile (1.6 km) crossing the low-lying area of Barrio La Playa at Avenida Padre Noel before draining into the Caribbean Sea about 30 or 40 yards from Avenida Padre Noel, in the area called Villa Pesquera.
Current course
Once the U.S. Corps of Engineers canalized Río Portugués as it flowed through the city of Ponce, the Corps also diverted its course from a south-southwesterly course to a south-southeasterly course. This diversion started immediately south of the river's intersection with Avenida Las Américas.