La Junta

La Junta was born with the railway and is named after it. This is where two lines met, or "joined": the Chihuahua al Pacífico, running from Ojinaga to Topolobampo, and the Ferrocarril del Noroeste de México, which climbed from here through northwestern Chihuahua to Ciudad Juárez. The 88 km branch to Temósachic was laid between 1902 and 1908 by the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient company. The town also held the oldest and largest workshops of the Chihuahua al Pacífico, now out of use. With roughly 8,400 people, it is the biggest town in Guerrero municipality, larger than the municipal seat itself, which lies about 20 km away.

The town turns up in Revolution history too. During the Punitive Expedition, General John J. Pershing's US troops camped at La Junta while hunting for Pancho Villa, who in those days was shot in the leg at Guerrero and dropped out of sight for a while, recovering in a cave in the area. In the Chepe era, on May 19, 1965, the station was officially renamed Estación Lic. Adolfo López Mateos after the president who opened the line. The name never caught on with locals; a decree of June 11, 2003 restored La Junta, though the old name still shows up on some documents and signs. The town's founding is commemorated every October 12.

As train traffic fell off, above all on the old Noroeste line, La Junta made a second living as a crossroads. Federal Highway 16 passes through on its way from Chihuahua across the sierra to Hermosillo and Bahía de Kino, and the state road to Guerrero and Madera starts here, so anyone bound for Creel, the Copper Canyon or Basaseachi Falls passes through. Apples are the other mainstay: the area grows high-quality fruit, sold fresh and turned into jams, pies and dried apple.

The town sits in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental, where a cool semi-arid climate shades into a temperate, subhumid one. It gets 500 to 600 mm of rain a year; June and July can reach 35 °C, snow is common in winter, and frosts go below −15 °C. On January 11, 2025 the temperature fell to −23.8 °C.