El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve
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How it came to be
El Pinacate and Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve covers 714,566 hectares of Sonora in northwest Mexico, just south of the border with Arizona. To the east lies the dormant Pinacate volcanic shield of black and red lava flows; to the west, the Gran Altar Desert, whose shifting dunes reach 200 metres. Ten enormous, deep and almost circular craters add to the landscape. The Pinacate volcanoes erupted on and off for about four million years, most recently some 11,000 years ago.
The most recent Indigenous inhabitants were the Pinacateño band of the Hia C-ed O'odham, who left trails running from one tinaja, or rock water pocket, to the next, along with stone tools and potsherds. In 1698 the Jesuit Eusebio Kino visited and climbed to the summit with his party, naming it Santa Clara Hill. The name Pinacate comes from the Nahuatl word pinacatl, for a stink beetle found only in the Sonoran Desert.
In 1907 a party led by MacDougal, Hornaday and Sykes explored the western part of the mountain. The biosphere reserve was established on 10 June 1993 and is managed by the federal government together with the state of Sonora and the Tohono O'odham. It was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2013.
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