LA NORIA DE SAN PANTALEÓN

Located less than thirty minutes from the center of Sombrerete, the Noria de San Pantaleón is a ghost town, a witness of the glorious mining past where gold and silver flowed freely, but where only a few families remain today. Discovered in the sixteenth century, its mine was exploited until the first decades of the twentieth century, when an English company reigned over a population of 5,000 inhabitants (hard to believe, but the population eventually reached 10,000). After the revolutionary process, the mine was returned to the hands of the workers, who were unable to keep it going, between bad management, landslides and floods. The curious visitor will discover the fortín, a watchtower used by the mine administrators to watch over their booty, the old church of the village and also los jales petrificados, a mountain of biologically dead mineral waste from the metal separation process. The village only comes back to life around July 27th, the feast day of San Pantaleón. The village is also visited for its chapel in honour of Santa Muerte: in the 1920s the miners had installed an image of the white lady in the church before she was expelled by a priest; since then, her chapel has welcomed devotees from all over the country, becoming one of the most visited chapels dedicated to Santa Muerte in the country. A curious discovery.