Culiacán

About Culiacán

Culiacán, officially Culiacán Rosales, is the capital and largest city of Sinaloa in northwestern Mexico. It is located within the Culiacán Municipality. The city was founded on 29 September 1531 by the Spanish conquistadors Lázaro de Cebreros and Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán originally under the name "Villa de San Miguel", in honor of its patron saint Michael the Archangel.

According to the 2020 INEGI census, Culiacán had an estimated population of 808,416, making it the 21st most populous city in Mexico. Its metropolitan area, with a population of 1,003,530, was the 17th most populous metropolitan area in Mexico.

The city sits in a valley on the slopes of the Sierra Madre Occidental, at the confluence of the Tamazula and Humaya Rivers, where both join to form the Culiacán River 55 meters above sea level.

The name derives from the Nahuatl colhua ("ancestor" or a tribal name) and the locative –cán ("place"), rendering "place of the Colhua". Some historians alternatively interpret it as "snake place" or "crooked hill". The most accepted theory is "place of the colhuas", or "inhabited by the colhua tribe", and the most frequent meaning is "place of worshiping the god Coltzin...

Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.