San José de Gracia

History

The town traces its origins to a group of Chichimeca people who worked on the Garabato hacienda and, between 1673 and 1675, were allowed to settle on the slopes of the Sierra Fría. The first community was sixteen families led by Juan Domínguez. They lived from hunting, fishing and cutting and working timber, in houses of stone, mud and grass.

In January 1811, after his defeat at Puente de Calderón, Miguel Hidalgo took refuge in the village for five days before moving on to the hacienda of Pabellón, where he was stripped of command of the insurgent army. The town's most loved religious image, the Señor Original, has its own legend: a crucified Christ that arrived in a wooden box on a mule with no owner, which stopped at the church door.

The twentieth century changed everything. The Cristero War reached the streets and hills of San José in 1926. Then the government of Plutarco Elías Calles built the Calles Dam between May 1927 and June 1928 to irrigate the Aguascalientes valley, and the reservoir drowned the old village. By 1930 it was abandoned. Residents including Antonio Ventura Medina, Rafael González Guerra and Juan García founded a new settlement, which became San José de Gracia; its status as municipal seat was restored in 1934. It was named a Pueblo Mágico in 2015.