Gateway to the Copper Canyon — a mountain railroad town where the Sierra Madre drops into a canyon four times the depth of the Grand Canyon
Creel (Chihuahua State, 2,330m elevation) is the highland railroad town that serves as the main base for exploring the Barranca del Cobre — the Copper Canyon system, a network of six interconnected canyons with a combined depth of 1,879m (deeper than the Grand Canyon at its maximum), cut by the Urique and Fuerte rivers through the Sierra Madre Occidental. The Chihuahua al Pacífico railway (El Chepe, inaugurated 1961, one of the world's great train journeys) connects Chihuahua city to the Pacific coast via 654 bridge crossings and 87 tunnels, stopping at Creel and descending through the canyon…
The Barranca del Cobre was known to Spanish colonial authorities as early as the 17th century through Jesuit missionary records, but remained effectively inaccessible until the Chihuahua al Pacífico railway was completed in 1961 — a 75-year construction project begun in 1897 as a Mexican government route to the Pacific. The Rarámuri people (who call themselves 'the running people') retreated into the deepest canyon walls during the Spanish colonial period to avoid enslavement in the silver and gold mines, and their isolation in the barranca system preserved a culture and running tradition tha…