Creel

History

Creel is a young town. It was founded on May 26, 1907, as Estación Creel, a depot on the railway being built from the city of Chihuahua toward the Pacific, on the site of a Rarámuri settlement called Seegórachi. It was named for Enrique Creel, then governor of Chihuahua and the main promoter of railroads in the state.

The original plan was for an agricultural colony where a small number of Mexican families would live alongside a Rarámuri majority, about 25 families to 75. In its first years the Mexican families came, but only around 30 Rarámuri families did.

The line, first known as the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway, ended at Creel for decades. Only in the 1960s did the Mexican government complete the route through the canyons to Los Mochis and the port of Topolobampo in Sinaloa, creating the Chihuahua al Pacífico railway. For most of that time Creel lived from logging.

Once the full line opened, travelers began stopping here on their way to the Copper Canyon, and over the last few decades tourism replaced timber as the town's main source of work. Creel was named a Pueblo Mágico in 2007, its centennial year.