Baja California Sur
state of Mexico
Baja California Sur, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California Sur, is a state in Mexico. It is the 31st and last state to be admitted, in 1974. It is also the least densely populated Mexican state, the second least populous, and the ninth-largest state by area.
Before becoming a state on 8 October 1974, the area was known as the El Territorio Sur de Baja California ("South Territory of Lower California"). It has an area of 73,909 km2 (28,536 sq mi), or 3.57% of the land mass of Mexico, and occupies the southern half of the Baja California Peninsula, south of the 28th parallel, plus the uninhabited Rocas Alijos in the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered to the north by the state of Baja California, to the west by the Pacific Ocean, and to the east by the Gulf of California. The state has maritime borders with Sonora and Sinaloa to the east, across the Gulf of California.
The state is home to the tourist resorts of Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo. Its largest city and capital is La Paz.
Etymology
The first European known to have landed in Baja California was a rebel navigator named Fortún Ximénez, who killed his captain and one of the envoys of Hernán Cortés, Diego de Becerra in his sleep, while he led a revolt and ruined the entire mission.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Baja California Sur” as state of Mexico. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q46508. VIAF identifies the subject as 130882424. The Library of Congress control number is n80063015. Authority coordinates are 25.440, -111.880. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1974.
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This entry incorporates text from “Baja California Sur” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.