La Huerta

La Huerta is the seat of its municipality on the southern Jalisco coast, at about 300 metres, with 7,954 people in 2020. It is named after an orchard: around 1827 José Olmedo planted a large one on the east bank of the creek, beside the hamlet the priest Vicente Monroy had recorded as Jesús María, and people called it Huerta de Olmedo. It later became Huerta de Jesús María, and La Huerta when it was made a municipality in 1946; before that it answered to Villa Purificación.

The town has weathered several disasters: a cyclone in 1944, Hurricane Lily in August 1971, which flooded the federal highway north of town and sent families to shelter in the church for days, an earthquake in 1973, and the magnitude 7.5 quake of October 9, 1995.

The municipality is large, 2,013 km², and runs from the sierra to the sea. It holds the Chamela-Cuixmala Biosphere Reserve and a coast of estuaries such as El Verde, El Rosario and the La Fortuna lagoon; crocodiles live at La Manzanilla, a beach village in the municipality. Around the town farmers grow maize, sorghum, sugar cane, watermelon, mango, tamarind and limes, and raise cattle. It is hot most of the year, averaging 25.2 °C.