Private Tour to Mineral de Pozos & Abandoned Mine

Overview

A private full-day tour from San Miguel de Allende to the historic Mineral de Pozos mining town, its real 400-year-old mine, and a Lavender Ranch stop, with lunch included.

Visit the real 400-year-old mine at Mineral de Pozos on a private full-day tour from San Miguel de Allende. Your guide shows you parts of the abandoned mine, including an optional mine shaft descent and several historic structures, while sharing details of the colonial mining period in Mexico. Afterward, visit Lavender Ranch, have lunch at a Mexican restaurant, and walk the central square before returning to San Miguel.

Highlights

• A Real 400-Year-Old Mine Explore parts of the genuinely abandoned Mineral de Pozos mine, with an optional mine shaft.
• Lavender Ranch Visit a real lavender farm as part of the day's countryside stops.
• Colonial Mining History Learn firsthand about the colonial-era mining industry that shaped this region.

What Stops Does This Tour Make?

A popular starting point — every Voyzo itinerary is fully customizable, so we'll shape the order and stops around your group.

Important Information

Frequently Asked Questions

About This Tour

A private full-day tour from San Miguel de Allende to the historic Mineral de Pozos mining town, its real 400-year-old mine, and a Lavender Ranch stop, with lunch included. Visit the real 400-year-old mine at Mineral de Pozos on a private full-day tour from San Miguel de Allende. Your guide shows you parts of the abandoned mine, including an optional mine shaft descent and several historic structures, while sharing details of the colonial mining period in Mexico. Afterward, visit Lavender Ranch, have lunch at a Mexican restaurant, and walk the central square before returning to San Miguel.

Mineral de Pozos began life in 1576 as a Spanish settlement built specifically to protect the precious metals passing through the region, and the mining itself started soon after — the Santa Brígida mine was established here in 1595 by Jesuit priests working the area's silver, gold, copper, lead, zinc, and mercury deposits. For roughly three centuries the town's fortunes rose and fell with the mines, but its real boom came late: during the Porfiriato, the decades-long presidency of Porfirio Díaz at the turn of the 20th century, major new investment poured in, and mines like Cinco Señores, founded in 1889 by European entrepreneurs, pushed the town to its peak. Estimates from that era put the population as high as 50,000, with as many as 17 separate gold and silver haciendas, some employing up to 1,000 workers apiece.

The collapse was just as dramatic as the boom. Mining activity largely ceased in the 1920s, the lower levels of the mines flooded, and the town was abandoned — by some local accounts, more than once. By 1950, barely 200 people remained in what had been a town of tens of thousands, and Mineral de Pozos spent decades afterward as exactly the kind of crumbling, half-buried ruin your guide walks you through today.

The town's current chapter is a genuine revival, not just a tourist gloss on a ghost town. Mineral de Pozos was officially designated a Pueblo Mágico (Magic Town) in 2012, and in recent years descendants of the original mining families have been moving back, restoring old houses, and installing art around town — the population today sits at roughly 3,500, still a fraction of its historic peak, but a real and growing one. Walking the mine ruins and the central square on this tour means seeing both halves of that story at once: a town built on a 400-year-old industry, and one that's slowly being lived in again.