Day Trip- Amparo Silver Mine Near Etzatlán

By Sara Alexander

Near Los Guachimontones, outside the town of Etzatlán is a ghost town / deserted mine of Amparo. I thought that would be an interesting side trip. Got directions, drove all over town and couldn’t find the right road. Finally stopped and asked a taxi to drive me there (it was listed as 6 km away…about 3-4 miles, but it actually turned out to be 10 miles away and an hour trip one way) and I would follow in my car. “That’s a long way. 300 pesos.” “300? Way too much. 200.” “250.” “Deal.”

I never in a million years would have found the right dirt road out of town. We started to go up the mountain…a little windy dirt road going up in the mountains to the middle of nowhere. We drove and drove and drove and I was ready to give up but he just kept going on up.

The were there little arroyos with running water that he crossed and I followed.  You couldn’t always tell how deep it was. I counted them on the way down and lost track after about 15….I think it must have been between 20 and 25 little streams we drove through.

Well we finally get there and it isn’t a ghost town. There is a brand new bandstand in the park and many very nice looking homes. There were several crumbling ruins.  Just a short drive from this village was this this ruin all by itself. Looks like it must have been a home or official building of some kind.  Maybe an office…the rooms downstairs were small, two had fireplaces, but not the size you would expect if that was a residence. The upstairs was in very bad shape and I didn’t go up there.

There was this interesting engraving on the cement steps with the date in roman numerals.  I just now noticed that it’s in English!

There’s this large tree in the front yard -next to a small stream that would have been a wonderful picnic spot….just the sounds of the stream, a few birds and lots of butterflies.

There were signs to several more ruins, but I didn’t want to drive through any more arroyos…didn’t want to chance getting stuck. I visited there during the height of this summer’s rainy season. If you are interested in visiting, I would recommend that you visit before or after the rainy season. There was some rumblings in the sky and I didn’t want to be caught up on the mountain if it started raining…those arroyos could get deep fast.