Durango is high, dry and empty: the Sierra Madre Occidental down its western edge, desert across the rest, and fewer than two million people in an area the size of England and Wales.
Hollywood found it in the 1950s and did not leave for thirty years. More than a hundred and fifty westerns were shot around Durango city — John Wayne made several, and the sets at Chupaderos and Villa del Oeste still stand, half film-lot and half ghost town.
The capital itself is a colonial city of pink stone built on iron ore, with a baroque cathedral and a historic centre that sees few foreign visitors. The Cerro del Mercado behind it was one of the largest iron deposits in the world.
West, the old road to Mazatlán crosses the sierra on the Espinazo del Diablo — the Devil's Backbone — a notorious set of switchbacks with drops on both sides. The motorway that replaced it in 2013 includes the Baluarte bridge, for a time the highest cable-stayed bridge in the world at 403 metres above the river. The old road is still open and still the better drive.
North, the Zona del Silencio near Mapimí is a stretch of desert with a reputation for swallowing radio signals; the science is thinner than the folklore, but the desert reserve around it is real and full of endemic species.
