Real del Monte

History

Before the conquest the Otomí called this place Magotsi, the high pass, because it lay on the route between the lordship of Metztitlán and Tenochtitlan. Old accounts say the Toltecs were already working the silver of the Pachuca range. Under Spanish rule it became a real de minas, a royal mining camp among the hills, which explains the name.

In the 18th century Pedro Romero de Terreros made a fortune from its mines. When he tried to cut the miners' share of ore and their wages in 1766, they walked out on August 15 and marched to Pachuca, an action often cited as the earliest forerunner of labor strikes in Mexico.

After independence the mines lay abandoned, and the third Count of Regla looked to England for capital. In 1824 the Cornish mining entrepreneur John Taylor leased them, and in 1825 four ships sailed from Falmouth with miners and 1,500 tons of equipment, including steam engines that took about a year to haul up from the Veracruz coast. Thousands of Cornish miners and their families settled here and in Pachuca, bringing steam power, football and the pasty. The English company sold out in 1848 to a Mexican-backed firm, which struck a bonanza at the Rosario mine in the 1850s.