Jiménez

Ciudad Jiménez is the first city you reach driving into Chihuahua from Durango or the Laguna region. It sits at 1,380 meters on the plain of the Río Florido, at the edge of the Bolsón de Mapimí desert basin, and has about 35,000 people. Its official name is José Mariano Jiménez, after the independence leader shot by firing squad in Chihuahua in 1811.

Settlement here is older than the town. In 1643 Captain Diego de Zubía built the Hacienda de Dolores de Guajoquilla on the riverbank, the first Spanish foothold in the area; Toboso raids emptied it in 1644 and again in 1671. On January 4, 1753, Captain Bernardo Antonio Bustamante y Tagle founded the military presidio of Santa María de las Caldas de Guajoquilla on hacienda land, bringing forty Spanish families. The state congress renamed it Villa de Jiménez on October 28, 1826, and made it a city in 1898.

The Mexico City–Ciudad Juárez railway turned Jiménez into a major junction, which is why the Revolution kept coming back to it. At Rellano station, Orozco's rebels beat federal troops under José González Salas on March 24, 1912; that May, Victoriano Huerta defeated them at the same spot and pushed on to Jiménez. During the 1929 Escobar rebellion, government forces drove the rebels out of the city and routed them on April 3 at Estación Reforma, the largest action of that uprising in Chihuahua.

As the railway faded, farming took over: pecan orchards, chile, onions and cattle. Jiménez is also known for its hot springs, among them the Ojo de Dolores, the Las Pampas spa and the caves with thermal water at the old Hacienda de Los Remedios on the Torreón road. The climate is semi-arid and harsh, above 40 °C in summer and below freezing on winter nights, with most rain in July and August.

The city's big day is August 6, the feast of its patron, the Santo Cristo de Burgos, with a fair, processions and matachines dancers. On the first Friday of February and of March, many locals walk in pilgrimage to the Cristo del Tizonazo shrine across the line in Durango. Local food runs to carne asada, carnitas and jamoncillos, a milk fudge, and the Rojos de Jiménez play baseball at the Estadio 21 de Marzo.