Why go
The story begins before modern road access, with nineteenth-century descriptions and daguerreotypes, and continues through Yucatán’s tourism campaigns in the 1920s. Knowing that sequence adds another layer to the site: what visitors see today was also shaped by travel, excavation and promotion.
The full story
John Lloyd Stephens’s writing helped introduce Maya Yucatán to a wider reading public. Benjamin Norman and Baron Emanuel von Friedrichsthal visited Chichen Itza after meeting him and published their own accounts. Friedrichsthal made early photographs with the new daguerreotype process. These records helped turn a difficult journey into an imagined destination for people far beyond the peninsula. Edward Thompson bought Hacienda Chichén in 1894 and hosted a stream of visitors. In the early 1920s, Yucatecan advocates including writer and photographer Francisco Gómez Rul pressed for roads to the monuments. Governor Felipe Carrillo Puerto formally opened the highway to Chichen Itza in 1923. Fernando Barbachano Peón then developed organized tourism from passengers arriving at Progreso, and the Mayaland Hotel opened near the ruins in 1930. The Carnegie Institution’s research and the growth of accommodation brought excavation and tourism into close contact. Later publicity around the spring equinox shadow on El Castillo added another reason for travel. These dated milestones explain the modern visitor landscape without making claims about current visitor numbers or ownership.