Mexico's Wild West — the Sierra Madre highland city where Spaghetti Westerns were filmed on the Churubusco backlot and the actual desert scrub around town, scorpion antivenom was pioneered, and the Quebrada de Milpillas canyon trail cuts through pine forest to ancient cliff dwellings
Durango is the capital of Durango state — a handsome colonial silver-mining city perched at 1,890 m in the Sierra Madre Occidental, known for its role as Mexico's Spaghetti Western movie capital. From the 1950s to the 1990s, American and Italian filmmakers came to Durango to use the surrounding scrubland, desert, and mountains as locations: John Wayne filmed at least seven westerns here (including Chisum, 1970), and Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969) — considered one of the greatest westerns ever made — was shot in and around the nearby town of El Parral. The film sets (particularly the 'C…
The Durango region was inhabited by the Tepehuan (Ódami) and Acaxee Indigenous peoples before Spanish colonisation — both groups put up fierce resistance to the Spanish. The Acaxee Revolt (1601–1603) and the First Tepehuan Revolt (1616–1618) were among the most serious indigenous uprisings in colonial Nueva Vizcaya (the Spanish province covering Durango and Chihuahua). Spanish conquistador Francisco de Ibarra founded Durango in 1563 as capital of Nueva Vizcaya, a massive northern frontier province covering what is today Durango, Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Sonora, and parts of New Mexico and Arizona.…