Chihuahua is the name of both a state of Mexico and that state's capital city. This article is about the state;

Location

Statistics
Capital Chihuahua
Area 244,938 km²
Ranked 1st
Population
(2005 census) 3,241,444
Ranked 11th
HDI (2004) 0.8224 - high
Ranked 8th
Governor
(2004-2010) José Reyes Baeza Terrazas (PRI)
Federal Deputies PRI: 6
PAN:3
Federal Senators PAN: 2
PRI: 1
ISO 3166-2
Postal abbr. MX-CHH
CHH

Chihuahua is a state in northwestern Mexico. With a mainland area of 244,938 km² (about the same as the United Kingdom), it is the largest Mexican state. Although Chihuahua is primarily identified by its large desert areas, it has more forests than any other Mexican state. On the slope of the Sierra Madre mountains (around the regions of Casas Grandes, Cuauhtémoc and Parral), there are vast prairies of short yellow grass, where most of the agricultural production of the state comes from.

The state is named after its capital city, Chihuahua. The origin of the name is not known for sure, but it is old, predating the Spanish, and is thought to derive from the Nahuatl Xicuahua, or "dry, sandy place".

Chihuahua stands on the U.S.-Mexico border, bounded on the north by the U.S. states of Texas and New Mexico and, to the east of Ciudad Juárez, by the Río Bravo del Norte (Rio Grande). The states of Sonora and Sinaloa border it on the west, Durango on the south, and Coahuila on the east.

As of 1990, there were 2.5 million inhabitants of the state. The largest city is not the capital, Chihuahua, with a half-million inhabitants, but Ciudad Juárez, with 1.5 million residents (2004 estimate). The capital was founded in 1709 by Don Antonio Deza y Ulloa.

Chihuahua's population is predominantly Mestizo, but it also has one of the largest proportion of white population among the Mexican States (35%). It also includes such minority groups as the indigenous Tarahumara, Tepehuanes and Warojios in the mountainous areas, as well as large rural communities of Mennonites of German/Dutch origin and Anglo-American Mormon settlers (primarily in Colonia Juarez and Colonia Dublan, near Casas Grandes ).

Chihuahua is known for its production of apples, nuts, timber, cattle and dairy products, sheep, ferrous (gold, silver, lead, zinc) and nonferrous metals, cement and ceramics. Large assembly plants (also known as Maquiladoras) geared toward export across the northern border are the dominant industry. The town of Mata Ortiz is recognized worldwide as the center of a new pottery movement.

The state also has a large service sector: tourism, banking and high tech enterprises.

One of the most notable features of Chihuahua is the Barranca del Cobre, or Copper Canyon, a spectacular canyon system larger and deeper than the Grand Canyon.

The city of Chihuahua is the state capital of the Mexican state of Chihuahua. It has a population of about 718,551. The predominant activity is light industry, in the form of maquiladoras.

This article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Chihuahua".