Vanegas

There was no Vanegas when the railway arrived. These plains, at about 1,740 metres and with under 300 mm of rain a year, held only a vast cattle estate, the Hacienda San Juan de Banegas, and the village grew out of the shacks of the track crews. Work on the Mexico City to Laredo line began in 1880 and it opened in November 1888, running dead straight across the flat desert; for years the camp's water came in a tank hauled by the work train. A station stood here by 1897, and on 9 November 1922 the state congress created a new municipality with the station as its seat.

The hacienda that gave the place its name lies to the south, where the boundaries of Cedral and Catorce meet. A spring of warm water rises there from salty ground, next to the remains of a late 18th-century chapel and the tall broken walls of the old granaries. In its heyday the estate struck its own copper tokens, called tlacos, to be spent at the company store, and ore from Real de Catorce was processed on its grounds. Francisca de la Gándara, who married Félix María Calleja in 1807 and became vicereine of New Spain, was born in Vanegas.

About 2,500 people live in the village today, mostly from livestock and farming. Within the municipality, the La Mojonera range has been a protected wildlife refuge since 1981, covering more than 9,000 hectares. Local cooking means barbacoa, nopales, pumpkin-seed sweets and mezcal.