El Fuerte

El Fuerte keeps a colonial street plan around its square and the reconstruction of the fort that gives it its name. It has a station on the El Chepe train (the Chihuahua–Pacific Railway), where travellers board for the Copper Canyon, and Yoreme (Mayo) communities live in its surroundings.

The municipal economy combines irrigated farming in the Río Fuerte district with cultural and nature tourism tied to the town and the nearby reservoirs.

Around 1563-1564 Francisco de Ibarra founded the Villa de San Juan Bautista de Carapoa, some way from the present site — the first Spanish settlement in the valley; sources disagree on the year. Destroyed and resettled several times, in 1610 Captain Diego Martínez de Hurdaide built the riverside fort — named for the Marquis of Montesclaros — that gave the place its lasting name.

Through the colonial era and the early years of independent Mexico, El Fuerte served at times as an administrative seat for the northwest and as a hub of the trade and mining routes toward the sierra and Chihuahua. The federal tourism ministry added it to the Pueblos Mágicos programme in 2010, though some sources date the designation to 2009.

The municipality lies where the coastal plain gives way to the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental. The Río Fuerte runs through it and is regulated upstream by the Miguel Hidalgo (Mahone) and Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez (Huites) dams.

Relief and vegetation are more varied than in the coastal municipalities; the climate is warm, with summer rains.