Topolobampo

Topolobampo sits on a system of sheltered bays — Ohuira, Topolobampo and Santa María — connected to the Gulf of California, and forms a functional conurbation with Los Mochis, about 20 km away.

Its wharves handle petroleum products, general cargo, mineral bulk and agricultural bulk — chiefly export maize within that last category — along with the passenger and vehicle ferry that links it with La Paz, in Baja California Sur. It is the western end of the Chihuahua–Pacific Railway line, whose freight reaches the port.

The passenger station of the El Chepe tourist train is in Los Mochis, not in Topolobampo.

In 1882 the American engineer Albert K. Owen obtained a railway concession from the Mexican government to link the interior of the country with a port at Topolobampo, and during that decade he promoted a utopian, socialist-inspired colony there. Neither that first railway project nor the colony — whose members eventually scattered across the region — prospered.

The railway was taken up again later under other companies: the full Chihuahua–Pacific line was inaugurated in 1961. The deep-water port developed through the twentieth century as the outlet for the farm production of northern Sinaloa.