When talking about the highest mountain in the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic boasts Pico Duarte and its official 3,087 meters above sea level, but there has always been controversy about its real height and that of its neighbor.
La Pelona scientific publication explains that since 1851, when the British Consul Sir Robert H. Schomburgk climbed Mt. Schomburgk climbed Mount Tina and estimated the height at 3,140 m above mean sea level, there has been controversy over which peak in the Central Cordillera of the Dominican Republic is the highest in the Caribbean, and how high that point is.
The publication reviews that in 1912 botanist Father Miguel Fuertes declared a mountain he called Loma Rucilla, the highest at 2855 m, and later botanist Eric Ekman climbed what he believed to be the same mountain, referred to it as Loma La Pelona and described it as a "barren plateau Ekman's description fits the mountain whose southern peak (mapped at 19 ° 01 21N, 70 ° 59 54W at Manabao. what we now know as Pico Duarte on modern maps, and whose northern peak (mapped at 19 ° 01 54N, 71 ° 00 21W on Lamedero sheet 1: 50000) is called Loma La Pelona.
Prior to 2000, it was not known exactly which of the two peaks was the highest in the Caribbean.
Although Pico Duarte was considered the highest, in the topographic maps of the Military Cartographic Institute of the Dominican Republic (currently in force), both peaks measure the same: 3,087 meters above sea level. These maps were elaborated with the help of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency of the United States, which today is the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency of that country.
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