The history of Catorce is an old one as you may have guessed and it is more interesting as one goes back in time... and also more difficult to know how Catorce was before the arrival of hispanic people.
History starts few years before the year 1638. We have no precise information about Real de Catorce before that year. But since it is well known that it was then when the town was officially declared a "Real" settlement, we can bet it was founded years before as a minor town. How long before 1638 we don't know. The region was being conquered by the spaniards in ways well known to humanity since very old times and up to this day,
Tribes known as chichimecas were the ones that occupied this land. But chichimecas is in reality the name central nahuas, namely aztecs, used to call the nahua and non-nahua tribes to the north. It is known that Comanches have raid more than once Catorce country, and at least once the Real de Catorce itself. One of the last raids came in 1744: Real de Catorce was set in fire and all papers of the first century of its history were reduced to plain ash. So, nobody knows for sure the details of this first period, unless the good god cares about till today. In 1772 -or around- the major mines were discovered and it became one of the more prosperous minning town of the americas. A history of wealth and also a history of up and downs developed continuously until now. At about the middle of the last century Real de Catorce was still in its "golden" age, although I must say its "silvery" age because it was mainly silver what was coming out of the earth here -the gold came mainly from Concepción del Oro in the neighboring state of Zacatecas. At around year 1888 the main plaza was remodeled, the streets repaired, and the town looks today quite the way it looked then, and not better. It was few years later, at the turn of the century, when the Tunnel was finished as the main way-in and out of town. The church and the biggest buildings are a century older than that... And by the begining of this century when every body thought that wealth were going to last forever, it then came the mexican revolution and the wealthy people ran out of here. The town entered its period of abandonement that lasted until our days. At the beggining of the last century there were about 15,000 people living here -and hardly more than that at any given time of its history- and all of a sudden only two or three hundred remained.
Today there are probably not more than 200 people living here. The present period of revival the town is enjoying started very slowly during de seventies of last century. The main attraction being its condition of nearly a ghost town. It never was a ghost town though. And now certainly it is far from that eerie existence, it is far from being a noisy town as well. It is just a very pleasant and quiet place to live if you like spartaan ways. Being a touristic and pilgrimage place around the year, the floating population is certainly part of it. Some people lives here year 'round while others are real regulars over the long run.
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