Eldorado

Eldorado lies in the valley of the San Lorenzo River, about 54 km south of Culiacán and close to where the river meets the Gulf of California. It was a district of Culiacán from 1917. Talk of breaking away began in the 1970s, and after several failed attempts the state congress voted on March 5, 2021 to create the municipality of Eldorado, along with Juan José Ríos; its first council took office on November 1, 2024. In 2020 the town had 14,772 people and the new municipality 46,628, with 167 km of coastline.

Just north of town on the San Lorenzo was Navito, a Sabaibo and Tahue settlement that Nuño de Guzmán's expedition reached in 1531. In 1856 Joaquín Redo and his wife Alejandra de la Vega bought land here and built the El Coloso textile mill and the La Aurora sugar mill. For a new mill the family bought the machinery of the San Claudio mill in Florida, able to grind 600 tonnes a day, shipped it from Tampa around Cape Horn and landed it at Rabala, south of Altata Bay. From there it was rolled on logs and hauled by oxen and mules along a 22 km trail through the brush. The first stone was laid on March 28, 1900, and the first harvest ran from March to May 1903, worked largely by Yaqui and Mayo families brought from Sonora.

More than a century on, the Eldorado mill is the only sugar mill still running in Sinaloa, and its tall chimney stands over the town. A mural on its walls shows the old Redo hacienda. The writer Inés Arredondo spent the summers of her childhood here.

Toward the sea, the municipality took over beaches that used to belong to Culiacán. Ponce has surf, horseback rides and ATV outings; El Conchal is calm, with seafood restaurants facing La Guadalupana bay; and Las Arenitas, next to Ponce, is good for herons, oystercatchers, pelicans and ospreys. To the west lies the Ensenada de Pabellones, a Ramsar wetland. Hunters from Mexico and abroad come for the migratory ducks from Canada, and the coast hosts sport fishing tournaments.