Sierra de Órganos

Sierra de Órganos is a small national park in the far northwest of Sombrerete municipality, near the Durango state line, protecting a ridge of volcanic rock that wind and water have carved into pillars, towers and fins 20 to 60 meters tall. Many of them stand side by side like the pipes of a church organ, which gave the range its name. Decreed a national park in 2000, it covers about 1,125 hectares, at altitudes between roughly 2,100 and 2,560 meters.

The landscape is high, dry and wide open: pinyon pine and oak in the higher parts, grassland, nopal, maguey and sotol below. More than 240 species of plants and animals have been recorded, including gray fox, white-tailed deer, ringtail and peregrine falcon. Days are warm and nights get cold, so dress in layers.

Filmmakers found the place long ago. From the 1950s to the 1990s it stood in for the American West in many films, among them John Wayne westerns such as The War Wagon and Big Jake, and in 2010 the park was included, together with Sombrerete's historic center, in the UNESCO World Heritage listing of the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. Today people come to hike among the rocks, climb, ride mountain bikes, camp, and photograph the formations at sunrise and sunset.