Pinos

History

The Gran Tunal was the land of the Guachichiles, whose name means red heads. Rock paintings survive in the Cañón del Duraznillo and at Jaltomate. From about 1550 Spanish captains explored the area, and the Guachichiles fought back with steady attacks on the silver road.

Gold and silver were found on the mountainside, and a mining claim from 1593 already mentions the settlement. On February 12, 1594, the viceroy's representative took formal possession of the Real de Nuestra Señora de la Concepción de Cuzco, mines of the Sierra de Pinos, marking out the plaza with stakes and raising a tall cross where the church would go. The pine forests that gave the sierra its name were cut to fuel the smelters. Franciscans were present by 1603, serving among others the Tlaxcalan settlers who gave one neighborhood its name. For two centuries Pinos was the seat of an alcaldía mayor.

By the War of Independence it was a rich, fortified mining town. In June 1817 the insurgent general Francisco Javier Mina took it after fifteen of his soldiers crossed the rooftops at night and surprised the royalist garrison in the plaza. Pinos became a municipality of Zacatecas in 1824 and was named a Pueblo Mágico in 2012.