Hermosillo

Hermosillo is the capital of Sonora and its largest city, with 936,263 people at the 2020 census, the 18th biggest city in Mexico. It sits in the middle of the state, about 210 meters above sea level, roughly 280 kilometers south of the US border and 107 kilometers inland from the Gulf of California, and Federal Highway 15 runs straight through it from south to north. The climate is hot desert: winters are mild, with cool nights and warm days, but for about three months the thermometer can pass 45 °C, and the summer monsoon, from July to September, brings short, windy downpours. Locals call it the Ciudad del Sol, the City of the Sun.

The city grew out of mission villages founded around 1700 for Seri, Pima Bajo, Tepoca and Yaqui families, and out of the Presidio de San Pedro de la Conquista del Pitic, a fort set up in 1741 to hold this part of the frontier. The settlement was known as Pitic until 1828, when it was renamed in honor of José María González de Hermosillo, a general of the independence war. It was briefly the state capital in 1831 and became the seat of government for good in 1879. The railway to Guaymas and Nogales arrived in 1881, and in 1913, after the murder of President Madero, Venustiano Carranza took refuge here and launched the Constitutionalist movement, which gave Hermosillo the nickname of the revolution's capital. Since the 1980s a large Ford assembly plant has driven much of its economy.

For a visitor, the old center is compact. The Catedral de la Asunción faces Plaza Zaragoza, a square laid out around 1780, with the white Palacio de Gobierno across it. Just south rises the Cerro de la Campana, a rocky hill named for its bell-like profile and for the phonolite rocks that ring like metal when struck; a road spirals up to the lookout, the best place to watch the city at sunset. At its foot, the 1908 penitentiary built by prisoners and Yaqui laborers now houses the Museo Regional de Sonora, run by INAH. The city also has the Museo de Arte de Sonora (MUSAS) and the Museo de Culturas Populares e Indígenas.

Hermosillo is beef country, and Sonoran food is built around mesquite-grilled steaks, machaca, chiltepín chiles and huge, paper-thin flour tortillas called sobaqueras. Its sweet signature is the coyota, a flat round pastry filled with piloncillo; the shops cluster around Plaza de la Candelaria in Villa de Seris, and the neighborhood's Fiesta de la Candelaria on February 2 is celebrated with tamales, coyotas and root beer. In May the Festival del Pitic fills the center with concerts, theater and street performers. Bahía de Kino on the coast is about 107 kilometers west, and from there boat trips go to Isla Tiburón, Mexico's largest island, which can be visited with the permission of the Seri community of Punta Chueca.