The port of La Paz has provided a safe harbor for mariners since it was first visited by Hernan Cortèz in 1535, in his explorations of the Sea of Cortez. At that time vessels set their anchors in the outer bay and smaller vessels would row into the protected inner harbor to land on the beach for water and provisions. In 1863 La Paz inaugurated its first pier for small coastal freighters, later enlarged to its current form in 1942, which provided the only dockage for visitors. The few cruisers entering the harbor anchored out in the Bay.

In 1983, a half-dozen of these cruisers, the forerunners of the hundreds who now arrive each year, tired of carrying every block of ice, case of beer, and box of groceries out to their anchored boats by dinghy, joined forces with a boat-building company with a concession on the waterfront, to build a marina. Thus Marina de La Paz, the first floating marina on the Baja California Peninsula, the second in all of Mexico, was born. First six slips, then thirty-two, until today, thirty three years later, over one hundred fifty boats can be accommodated in Marina de La Paz.