On or around 1850, Bartolomé Borrás Llacér arrived in Puerto Rico from Palma de Mallorca, Spain.  A few years later he acquired some land in Caguas and together with brothers Pascual (1836-1910), Sebastián, Juan and Gabriel, who had also emigrated to the island, established Hacienda Santa Catalina.  By 1863 Hacienda Santa Catalina, with approximately one thousand acres, was the main muscovado sugar producer in Caguas and the second largest behind Hacienda San José.  It is reported that after the abolition of slavery in 1873, there were only three haciendas in Caguas with steam driven mills producing muscovado sugar; Hacienda Santa Catalina, Hacienda Cuatro Calles of Landelino Aponte Diaz (1828-1904) and Hacienda San José of José Rios Fiducci. 

In 1880 still owned by Bartolomé Borrás, Hacienda Catalina was a one thousand four hundred cuerdas sugar estate with a steam driven mill.  In 1901 Celestino Solá leased hacienda Catalina from the estate of Bartolomé Borras but by 1905 Hacienda Catalina's days as a sugar plantation were over due to its partition between family members and the lack of capital to modernize its machinery. 

In her book Santa Juana y Mano Manca, Ivonne Acosta states that on or around 1906 New Yorker John Blackwell Cobb acquired Hacienda Santa Catalina from Francisco Ramis Borrás (1875-1946), son of Maria Luisa Borras Llacér (1843-1932) and her husband Guillermo Ramis.  In his book Smoker Beyond the Sea, Juan José Baldrich states that in 1907 Francisco Ramis Borrás sold his part of the estate consisting of one hundred seventy four cuerdas to John Blackwell Cobb and Luis Toro Pasarell to grow tobacco.  Cobb was at the time a top executive at the American Tobacco Co. also known as the Tobacco Trust and Toro Pasarell was President of the Porto Rican-American Tobacco Co., a subsidiary of the American Tobacco Co. By 1908 Hacienda Santa Catalina had completely ceased to grind its own sugarcane, whatever sugarcane was grown on its land was processed at the nearby Central Santa Juana which had been established in 1906.

Hacienda Santa Catalina is today sometimes referred to as Hacienda Las Catalinas because the old chimney which is its only remaining structure standing, is behind the Las Catalinas Mall next to PR-52 on the north bank of the Caguitas River only about a mile and a half east of Hacienda San José.