Jalpa de Cánovas

History

Jalpa traces its origin to 1542, when the Audiencia of Nueva Galicia, acting in the jurisdiction of the Villa de Lagos, granted the Spanish captain Juan de Villaseñor y Orozco four large cattle tracts and eight caballerías of farmland. The grant, roughly 7,000 hectares, straddled the border between the kingdoms of New Spain and Nueva Galicia. Villaseñor, remembered as the ancestor of a lineage that would include Miguel Hidalgo and Agustín de Iturbide, left the estate to his daughter María de Orozco.

The village grew up as the core of that hacienda, and what visitors see today still reflects it: the big house, the dams known as Presa Vieja and Presa Nueva, the flour mill and the walnut orchards. The Templo de la Misericordia was designed by the English architect Luis Long.

Jalpa de Cánovas received its Pueblo Mágico title on December 20, 2012, in a ceremony at the church where residents staged the Judea, a Holy Week tradition of Purísima del Rincón.