Sombrerete

History

The earliest known people here belonged to the Chalchihuites culture, settled farmers who lived in the region until about the year 900. After their communities disappeared, nomadic hunter-gatherers the Spanish called Chichimecas occupied the land.

In 1555 Juan de Tolosa arrived with a small party of Spaniards, Franciscan friars and indigenous allies and camped beside a spring at the bottom of a ravine. That camp became the Real y Minas de Sombrerete, named for a nearby hill shaped like the three-cornered hats of the time. The Franciscan monastery of San Mateo was founded in 1567, and in 1570 the Audiencia of Guadalajara granted the title of Villa de Llerena. In the 17th century a royal treasury office here assayed ore from as far away as Chihuahua and Sinaloa. The Pabellón and Vetanegra mines made the Fagoaga family rich enough to earn a noble title, and mining money paid for the town's churches and surrounding haciendas.

Around 1800 the town had some thirty thousand residents, and a mint opened in 1810. Sombrerete became a city after independence, Benito Juárez passed through in 1866, and it served as provisional state capital in 1913 and 1914. UNESCO listed its historic center in 2010 as part of the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, and it was named a Pueblo Mágico in 2012.