History of Suesca

Suesca existed long before climbing: it was a Muisca town of the Guatavita chiefdom, later a colonial doctrina with a church from 1601, and in the 20th century the crossing of two railways. This page gathers that history with the sources that document it, including the parts nobody has yet been able to document.

The rock: a Cretaceous beach, stood on end

The cliff is sandstone: grains of quartz bound by siliceous cement, in beds from half a metre to three metres thick. It belongs to the Guadalupe Group, which in this area divides into four formations: Arenisca Dura, Plaeners, Arenisca de Labor and Arenisca Tierna. All of it was sand on the beaches and shelves of a shallow Cretaceous sea, deposited some 65 to 100 million years ago (one old guide says 110).

Then the cordillera did its work: the strata folded into the Suesca anticline, cut by the Nemocón reverse fault, and the Bogotá River eroded the eastern flank until the hard band of sandstone was left exposed. The result is walls of up to about 150 metres, with the cracks, dihedrals and ledges that are climbed today.

The Rock of the Birds

The name comes from Muisca: sue, bird, and hyca, rock. Rock of the Birds. In old documents it also appears as Sueica or Suesuca, and the chroniclers did not always agree: Joaquín Acosta took from Fray Pedro Simón another derivation, "macaw's tail". Both are noted.

Before the conquest, Suesca was an uta, a town, of the Guatavita chiefdom, in the Muisca Zipazgo. The village of Cacicazgo, at the entrance to the Rocks, keeps the name of the cacique's house. In the village of Güita there are pictographs painted in black and red on the boulders: they are among the most extensive in Cundinamarca and also among the most vandalised. Near the border with Nemocón there is a polychrome mural, red and yellow, documented by researcher Diego Martínez Celis. Whether that art was painted by the Muisca or by earlier peoples is an open academic debate; here we tell it as what it certainly is: ancestral art of this territory.

A few kilometres away is Lake Suesca, shared with Cucunubá. It is of tectonic origin and fed only by rain. For the Muisca it was a sacred lake, with a shrine, of the same family as Guatavita, Tota or Iguaque. Its recent history is sadder: in 2020 alarms went off because the water surface was drying up, and on 1 March 2021 the Cundinamarca Governor's Office, the CAR and the municipalities of Suesca and Cucunubá agreed a rescue plan. A later report from the Governor's Office speaks of a partial recovery, with about 1.5 m of depth. We found no report of its state in 2025 or 2026.

The Virgin of the ledge: the unanswered question

Anyone who has walked the rail line has seen her: on a ledge, above the roof that is climbed on aid, there is a statue of the Virgin. The zone bears her name, Zona de la Virgen, and the climbing guidebook describes her in one sentence: above the roof "stands a statue of the Virgin that gives this zone its name".

The two trains

Two railways passed through Suesca, and they are confused all the time. The one at the Rocks is the Nordeste: construction began in 1925, under the Belgian Société Nationale de Chemins de Fer; it reached Tunja and Sogamoso in 1931, and in 1938 the Nation bought it and extended it to Paz de Río. Suesca station is kilometre 74 of that line. Today the Bogotá–Belencito corridor is still alive as a freight line, one of the three rail corridors in operation in Colombia, loaded mostly with cement, and the ANI has announced its modernisation. That is why the standing warning of the rail line: the train passes.

The other is the Ferrocarril del Norte: Bogotá–Zipaquirá from 1889 and the branch to Nemocón of 1906-07. Of that one, two rural stations remain on Suesca land, La Laguna and El Crucero, today in ruins. The country's railway stations have been cultural heritage since Decree 746 of 1996. And a clarification that is needed: the Sabana tourist train runs from Bogotá to Zipaquirá on the Northern branch. It does not pass through Suesca.

The town and its church

Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada reached the indigenous town on 14 March 1537, and that day Fray Domingo de las Casas celebrated the first mass. In 1565 the town moved to its present site, fleeing the river's floods, and on 2 August 1600 the oidor Luis Enríquez formally founded the pueblo de indios.

The doctrina church of Our Lady of the Rosary was raised by the Dominicans: the chapel dates from 1601 and is one of the few in Cundinamarca that keep their colonial layout. The Virgin of the Rosary has been the town's patroness since 7 October 1665; the present tower is from 1834, and the church has been national heritage since Decree 1897 of 1993. The town's two big dates are the patronal feast, every 7 October, and the "Rock of the Birds" Cultural Week, around 14 March, the anniversary.

Today's economy is shared among the flower crops of the river plain, the dairy cattle of the high parts, potato, maize and vegetables, some coal and clay for brick, one cement plant, and the visitors who come for the Rocks, by bicycle or on foot.

The history of the climbing itself, from Kraus to the first sport route of 1984, is told in The Rocks and in the Practical guide.

Sources: Suesca Mayor's Office, Cundinamarca Governor's Office, Banco de la República, COLPARQUES, Turistren and the Suesca climbing guidebooks. What no source confirms is marked as such in the text.