Sonora – Mexico’s Wild West

by Bob Brooke

During the heyday of westerns, films showed cowboys riding through the Great Sonoran Desert from Arizona to what is now the State of Sonora in Mexico. The desert is still there and so are the cowboys.

Sonora is Mexico’s wild west. In some ways, it reflects the Old Mexico of the by-gone days of yesteryear. In others, it reflects the new Mexico-the Americanized Mexico of Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club, Pizza Hut and Burger King.

Beginning in Nogales on the Arizona border with the U.S., I decided to make a trek into an area of Mexico that’s often left off of the main tourist beat. The main roads through the State are well-marked and maintained due to Sonora’s almost fraternal bond with its northern neighbor, Arizona. Since I was already within the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, the landscape changed little as I crossed the border.

Unsuccessful early Spanish attempts to settle what’s now the state of Sonora left the area nearly invisible until the 17th and early 18th Centuries. But the discovery of gold in Alamos brought a steady stream of settlers from the south, and by 1824 the former province of Sonora y Sinaloa had become the State of Occidente. Eventually, the Mexican government divided Occidente into the States of Sonora and Sinaloa.