A large hacienda, it was founded in 1830, by Juan Bautista Plumey, a French immigrant, who arrived in Puerto Rico with enslaved people.

The Café Bistro Hacienda Lealtad on Puerto Rico Highway 128 kilometer 55.8, is where groups meet for the start of their tour of the 19th century coffee plantation.

[12] While some documents state that people from Hacienda Lealtad participated in the revolt, a historian named Joseph Harrison Flores, with the National Archives of Puerto Rico, studied the history of the estate and Grito de Lares[13] and stated that only an eight-year-old child of a slave from Hacienda Lealtad was at the revolt, and spent 6 months in prison.

[15] Coffee production and exportation dropped considerably after Puerto Rico was acquired by the United States with the 1898 Treaty of Paris, and eventually, the plantation fell into disuse and decline.

The place had sentimental value to Edwin Soto, a Puerto Rican businessman from Lares, who had picked ripe coffee beans there as a child.

Soto invested millions of dollars into its restoration and Hacienda Lealtad is now a living museum, a hotel, coffee shop, offering educational tours to local and international tourists.

Since the start of its restoration Café Lealtad, Inc., as the company is called, has purchased coffee seeds and other equipment and services from the Puerto Rico Department of Agriculture.

[12] The dress worn by Keysi Vargas, Puerto Rican contestant in the 2015 Miss World Beauty pageant, represented Hacienda Lealtad coffee.

[29][30] In 2015, a made-for-television movie, La Cenicienta Boricua (Puerto Rican Cinderella) was filmed at Hacienda Lealtad[31][32] and released on Telemundo.