[3][4] The Hacienda is located on 81.79 acres (331,000 m2) of fertile land that includes a humid subtropical forest some 7 miles (11 km) north of Ponce on Route PR-123,[5] in Corral Viejo, a subbarrio of Barrio Magueyes.

[6][8] The second reason Hacienda Buena Vista is significant is that it offers one of the best remaining examples of a Puerto Rican coffee plantation.

This is important because in the latter part of the nineteenth century the coffee produced in Puerto Rico and exported to Europe and the United States was considered among the finest in the world.

[6] Hacienda Buena Vista was started as a truck farm to produce mostly plantains, bananas, corn and avocados, by Don Salvador de Vives in 1833.

[3][4] De Vives was a Catalan immigrant arriving from Venezuela and he set up the farm to sell its produce in the Ponce market and in the sugarcane estates along the southern coast.

Later, Don Salvador's grandson oversaw the addition of coffee growing and processing to the plantains and cornmeal, taking advantage of the great coffee-growing boom of the 1880s and 1890s.

Don Salvador's son and grandson introduced some of the most innovative farm machinery on the island, powered by a nearby 100-foot (30 m) waterfall.

[11] By 1937 agriculture had seriously declined in Puerto Rico, and the plantation was abandoned, becoming mostly a weekend country house for the Vives heirs.

Despite the grave deterioration of the coffee-processing machinery and the farm buildings, the Conservation Trust managed to restore the estate so that it could be used to educate the public about the golden era of fine coffee growing in the mountains of Puerto Rico.

The machinery of the original Hacienda has been put in motion again, farm animals roam the grounds, the farmhouse rooms have been furnished, and the scent of freshly roasted coffee fills the surrounding air.

Salvador Vives arrived in Puerto Rico from Venezuela fleeing the struggle for independence going on in that country at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

It was thus that Vives traveled from Venezuela to Puerto Rico on 27 June 1821 with his wife Isabel Diaz and son Carlos.

[14] With no capital to buy sugarcane-growing land, Salvador Vives worked for the municipal government of Ponce during the 1820s and 1830s in assisting other displaced Spanish emigrants and also as a public notary.

By 1838 he had enough money to purchase 482 acres (1.95 km2) of hilly, undeveloped, tropical forest land in barrio Magueyes, to the north of the city of Ponce, and near the Canas River.

[14] The development of a new road in that area, PR-123, would also guarantee that products from Vives' future farm could be bought down for sale to the marketplace in Ponce with relative easy.

[15] In 1837 Vives purchased a corn mill, a coffee depulper, a cotton gin, and a rice husking machine, all animal-powered, to process its agricultural goods.

During the 1840s the hacienda's economic activity had diversified into produce production and corn flour distribution throughout Puerto Rico's central coastal region.

"[16] The building of the now-historic Barker engine also came under son Carlos Vives tenancy: "In 1847, with the demand for milled corn rising given the increase in sugar plantation slaves around Ponce, Carlos constructed another building for a new corn mill powered with a hydraulic turbine from the West Point Foundry, in Cold Spring, New York.

"Production of corn meal and coffee provided a diversified economic basis for the continued success of the hacienda.

"[18] Some of the best Puerto Rican coffee was produced in the central mountain area of the island around Yauco, Ponce, Lares, Maricao, Utuado, and Cayey.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Hacienda Buena Vista produced and processed over 5 tons of coffee a year, just for export to Europe.

The third blow came in 1901, when Puerto Rico was included into the United States Customs System, setting the local coffee production at a competitive disadvantage over its European markets.

[18] Hacienda Buena Vista is located in Barrio Magueyes, in the municipality of Ponce, Puerto Rico at between 160 and 460 meters above sea level.

[20] The coffee de-pulping and husking mill is a 2-story wooden building located to the northwest of the Hacienda manor house.

[22] "The hydraulic turbine for the corn mill was ordered by a Mr. Bennet, in August 1853, as agent for Don Carlos Vives, from the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, New York.

It is significant that in the mid-1840s—while the hacienda was being developed—the Scotch turbine was being patented in the United States after European designs (particularly the La Cour's centrifugal wheel).

This acute shortage of extant early hydromachinery is the principal reason why the technological history of the water motor remains obscure and relatively poorly documented...Recently, however, the discovery of a unique turbine located on a plantation at Ponce, near the south coast of Puerto Rico, promised to open a new window on the past....

The turbine at Hacienda Buena Vista…is the only pre-Scotch type-known to exist and is the sole extant example of a pioneer and historically important machine that was invented at the close of the 17th century by Dr. Baker....

The Buena Vista turbine is, in effect, a missing link in the evolution of mechanical artifacts better known to the historians of technology.

This area protects the integrity of the river and its riparian ecosystem in both natural and historic agricultural contexts, having been important for the development of the hacienda itself.