Santa Rosa

Declared in 1971 as the first national park in the province of Guanacaste, Santa Rosa protects La Casona, an old cattle-ranch homestead that in 1856 was the setting of the Battle of Santa Rosa, in which Costa Rican troops defeated in barely 14 minutes the forces of the American filibuster William Walker, who was attempting to annex Central America; the episode is still marked as a national day in Costa Rica. The park also protects one of the largest remnants of tropical dry forest in the whole of Central America.