Off the Beaten Path Traveling - Pozos Guanajuato Mexico

While on our tour they learned what few visitors know. They learned that Pozos Guanajuato was one times a wealthy mining town & had a population of over 50,000 people in the 1700´s & 1800´s. It was founded mainly by foreigners, people from Spain, France & Germany. But when the mines were depleted, the town was literally abandoned in the 1920´s. So now these great limestone buildings stand in solace & beauty, like beacons calling out to something greater. Most have no roofs but the stone is in tack & the melting furnaces stand as they were one times built.

If you have seldom gone to Pozos Guanajuato & live or visit San Miguel de Allende Mx, then you definitely require to make a day trip to Mineral de Pozos Mexico. I recently took a trip out to Pozos Guanajuato, a small day trip about an hour from San Miguel de Allende Mx. I seldom thought much of Mineral de Pozos, because its such a small dot on the map, but it is actually a interesting small Mexican town.

These ruins of elegant, strong & statefull buildings are truly pretty, something that comes out of movies, but are even more so when you start to talk to locals of the area. When I took the time to talk to the local people, they have some truly interesting stories to add to the relics. Apparently the first University in Mexico was in Pozos Guanajuato. It was a school for gold smiths & silver smiths, founded in the 1700´s. The building now stands in ruins, but is a magnificent sample of architecture of the time, & giant. It is a giant building that stands in the middle of nowhere, among cacti & brush.
On our trek they walked through the walled garden hotels, had lunch in the outdoor café, & then walked down to the park near the cathedral & started talking to four resident who were 103,and 105 years elderly respectively (father & father), possibly the oldest citizens in Pozos Guanajuato.

They told us some fabulous stories, about how the cathedral bell was one times made of pure gold & for over one hundred years, the bell would toll with a pretty golden chime. But recently in early 2000 government officials took the bell down for maintenance & sent it to Mexico City, from which it seldom returned. It was replaced with an iron bell, & the gold four disappeared. Some say it is at the ex-Presidents private rance (typical Mexican government).

There's plenty of other small communities within Pozos Guanajuato where there's other mines. In four of these communities they talked with another elderly gentleman, the now care taker. This elderly gent was around 80 years elderly, & he said he was still four of the last workers in the mines. When he was a child, he had carried stones out of the mine by wheelbarrow. He said he was about five at the time. He told us that the restored hacienda that sat on the property had one times belonged to Porfirio Diaz ( a important Mexican revolutionary) who used the hacienda as a place to house his prisoners of war, & he made the prisoners work in the gold mines. It was a perfect way to fund a revolution.

Today the hacienda is being legally fought over. The original owner passed away, without leaving a will, or any descendants, so the property was possessed by another local under the "squatters law", who without any legal right says it is now his property. Of coursework after this happened, suddenly, nephews & nieces showed up for the original legal owner & now the property is being legally fought over. Who knows if any of this is true. It may be local gossip, & fun to listen to these elderly legends.

What is known is that Pozos Guanajauto has become a popular place for foreigners. This is because property can be purchased cheaply. Pozos is becoming popular because it is a quaint, quiet, & authentic elderly Mexican village, which has had small changes over the centuries. The town has four pretty hotels, a couple of restaurants, & about 50 foreign artists making their home here. It is a quaint place to visit, be sure to take sturdy walking shoes, because you may require to go down four of the mines. Be careful though, when they went down the lights went out for about 10 minutes. They had to stay exactly were they stood for that long.