Santa Eulalia

Santa Eulalia, seat of Aquiles Serdán municipality, is among the oldest settlements in the state of Chihuahua. Spanish captain Diego del Castillo founded it in 1652 after striking silver. The camp then sat nearly empty for years until fresh discoveries in 1707 brought miners back and gave it the name Santa Eulalia de Mérida de Chihuahua. Its wealth led Antonio de Deza y Ulloa, governor of Nueva Vizcaya, to make it a real de minas, a royal mining seat, yet the broken hill country left no room for a proper town. The leading residents voted to move the seat down to the nearby valley, and that move founded the city of Chihuahua.

Mining ruled local life until the middle of the 20th century, when several mines shut and the economy slipped. Silver came first; later the district turned out zinc and lead, with work on and off since the 1990s, and mineral collectors know it for specimens such as rhodochrosite. Until 1995 the town's official name was Aquiles Serdán, the same as the municipality created in 1844; that year it took back the name Santa Eulalia.

The 2020 census counted 20,042 residents. The town sits at 1,697 meters in a semi-arid climate with cold winters, and it has all but merged with the capital's suburbs, where many younger people have moved. Visitors come for the narrow cobbled lanes climbing the hillsides, the old church of Santa Eulalia, the old mining buildings and the lookouts over mine shafts and desert ranges. The municipality runs walking tours of the center and trips to old mines from a tourist booth, and the municipal mining museum displays the tools of underground work along with semi-precious stones from the district. Next door is the old mining camp of Santo Domingo, where an abandoned hilltop church is reached by a stairway of around 150 steps.