Navojoa

Navojoa, seat of the municipality of the same name, is one of Sonora's larger cities, with 120,926 people in the 2020 census. It lies in the valley of the Mayo River, roughly 40 to 50 meters above sea level, between the Sierra Madre foothills and the Gulf of California, and goes by the nickname La Perla del Mayo. The name is Mayo (Yoreme) for cactus house: navo means prickly pear and jova means house. Yoreme families have farmed this valley since before the Spanish arrived, and crosses of mesquite or ironwood still stand in front of many homes around the city.

There are really two Navojoas. Jesuit Pedro Méndez founded the mission of Santa María de Navojoa beside the river in 1614. Then, after a flood in 1907, residents asked for higher ground near the new railway, and on May 7 of that year, the day the first train pulled in, the neighborhood of Pueblo Nuevo de Navojoa was born; the old settlement, now called Pueblo Viejo, was left behind. Francisco I. Madero stepped off at this station on his 1910 campaign. Álvaro Obregón, born at the nearby Hacienda de Siquisiva, became president of Mexico in 1920, and Pueblo Nuevo took the name Navojoa in 1918.

Downtown centers on Plaza 5 de Mayo, with an obelisk to Obregón and a replica of the Winged Victory added in 2007. The Templo del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús was remodeled between 1952 and 1957, trading its neo-Gothic look for a twin-towered neo-Baroque front in pink stone. The clock tower and the city hall are close by. The old railroad station, opposite Santa Fe Springs Square, holds the Museo Regional del Mayo, five rooms of pre-Hispanic and colonial objects, Yoreme ethnography, crafts and local history. Sculptures welded from scrap iron dot the avenues and parks, part of a city project chasing a world record for their number.

About 18 km away on the Mayo River, the Tehuelibampo eco-museum protects 89 petroglyphs. Professor Lombardo Ríos Ramírez, whose name the regional museum carries, brought the site to light in 1984, and the museum building is made of local stone. El Rebote, an ecological park on the riverbank, opened in 2018. Adolfo Ruiz Cortines Dam, locally called Mocúzarit, draws anglers, kayakers and water-skiers. At Easter many local families camp for a week at Las Bocas beach, and Huatabampito is about an hour away.

Expect dry heat: the yearly mean is around 25 °C, highs of 48 °C have been recorded in May and June, and most rain falls from July to September. The economy rests on Mayo Valley agriculture, two big hog producers that export to the US, Germany and Japan, a FEMSA brewery and a growing shrimp-farming sector. Travelers mostly use Navojoa as the base for Álamos, the colonial Pueblo Mágico in the hills about 48 km inland.