Presa Mocúzari

Maps call it the Adolfo Ruiz Cortines dam; everyone in the Mayo Valley calls it the Mocúzari. A 775-meter earth embankment blocks the Río Mayo in the northwest of Álamos municipality, close to the Navojoa line. It went up in the 1950s to feed Irrigation District 038 Río Mayo, supply Navojoa, Etchojoa and Huatabampo, and tame the river's floods. A small hydro plant with a single Kaplan turbine sits below the wall; Conagua owns the dam and CFE runs the plant.

The reservoir started out holding 1,100 million cubic meters, raised to 1,300 million by a 1968 enlargement, though silt has since eaten into that. Its level swings hard from year to year. In 1985 it overflowed, about 20,000 people were evacuated and floodwater cut the international highway north of Navojoa. At the other extreme, in March 2024 it held only 8.7 million cubic meters, under 1 percent and the lowest on record, against 480 million on the same date a year earlier.

Next to the wall lies El Mocúzari, also called Conicárit, home to 652 people in 2020. The name is from the Mayo language and means house or place of the crow. It began as the Jesuit mission of San Andrés de Conicari and became a municipal seat in 1903, was nearly deserted by the early 1920s, and came back to life when the dam forced the settlement to move to where it stands now.

Most visitors come to fish for largemouth bass, catfish and mojarra. The Álamos town government restocks the reservoir: in May 2026 it released 385,000 tilapia fry, its third stocking of the year.