Cape Mesurado

Cape Mesurado, also called Cape Montserrado, is a headland on the coast of Liberia near the capital Monrovia and the mouth of the Saint Paul River. It was named Cape Mesurado by Portuguese sailors in the 1560s. It is the promontory on which African American settlers established the city now called Monrovia on 25 April 1822.

There is a lighthouse on Cape Mesurado, located in the Mamba Point neighborhood of Monrovia and in the cape's northwestern portion, that was established in 1855. It is currently inactive, although the Liberian government is seeking financial assistance to restore and reactivate the lighthouse.

Cape meurado was being used as a base for the slave trade and in 1815 Governor William Maxwell of Sierra Leone sent an armed force to raid the settlement, seizing ships, merchandise and enslaved Africans from the factories there. The factory owners were sentenced to fourteen years transportation to New South Wales by the Vice admiralty court.

In 1821, the American Colonization Society dispatched a representative, Dr. Eli Ayers, to purchase land farther north up the coast from Sierra Leone, where the settlers had previously landed at Sherbro Island but were experience a high death rate due to the island's swampy, unhealthy conditions.

With the aid of , a U.S. naval officer, Ayers sought out land to establish a new colony. Stockton led negotiations with leaders of the Dei and Bassa peoples who lived in the area of Cape Mesurado. At first, the local ruler, Zolu Duma (King Peter), was reluctant to surrender their peoples' land to the strangers, but was forcefully persuaded—some accounts claim at gun-point—to part with a "36 mile long and 3 mile wide" strip of coastal land for trade goods, supplies, weapons, and rum worth approximately $300.

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