El Sauce is a municipality

Municipality

A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...

 in the León

León (department)

León is a department in Nicaragua. It covers an area of 5,107 km² and has a population of 389,600 . The capital is the city of León.- Municipalities :# El Jicaral# El Sauce# La Paz Centro# Larreynaga# León# Nagarote# Quezalguaque...

 department

Departments of Nicaragua

Nicaragua is a unitary republic, and for administrative purposes, it is divided into 15 departments and two self-governing regions based on the Spanish model:-Zelaya Department:...

 of Nicaragua

Nicaragua

Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...

. Located in the foothills of the Segovia Mountains, the population is 30,500 people, the geographic coordinates

Geographic coordinate system

A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on the Earth to be specified by a set of numbers. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represent vertical position, and two or three of the numbers represent horizontal position...

 are 86°32'0" West and 12°53'0" North, and the area is 629.97 km².

El Sauce is bordered to the north by the the municipalities of San Jose de Achuapa

San José de Achuapa

San José de Achuapa is a municipality in the León department of Nicaragua....

 and Estelí

Estelí

Estelí, officially Villa de San Antonio de Pavia de Estelí is a city and municipality within the Estelí department. It is the third largest city in Nicaragua, an active commercial center in the north and is known as "the Diamond of the Segovias."...

 and bordered to the south by with the municipality of Larreynaga

Larreynaga

Larreynaga, primarily known as Malpaisillo, is the second largest municipality in the León department of Nicaragua. The estimated population is 31,000 but it steadily growing at a rate of 2.22% yearly.-History:...

.

History

El Sauce was originally called Guayabal. The town gained much attention when a statue called the Black Christ of Esquipulas was sent there from Guatemala, then was placed for the first time under a willow tree, the area was renamed "El Sauce. " The statue was placed after a church and can still be seen today.

During the decade of 1900, El Sauce was a railway crossing which includes items such as coffee and animals to the port city of Corinto. The railway closed 40 years ago because it was sold as scrap, an event that had significant impact on the railway closure. El Sauce is still a small town dedicated to agricultural production, bees and livestock.

Population

In 1971, El Sauce had a population of 12,869 inhabitants. In 1995 the population grew to 24,289 inhabitants, which represents 7.36% of total department. The annual growth rate of the municipality of the last inter-census period (1971-1995) is 2.82%.

El Sauce, León, Nicaragua