About 2 million tourists visit for harbor cruising, golf, sport fishing, eco-adventures, the performing arts, Colonial-era heritage sites and family-friendly activities, such as the Mazatlan Aquarium, one of Mexico’s largest.

Most of the large hotels are located in the Golden Zone north of downtown, but a growing number of boutique hotels are being restored near the historic city center of Old Mazatlan and the tree-lined Plaza Machado.

More and more of the 480 historic sites and 19th Century buildings in Old Mazatlan are being restored as restaurants, nightclubs, museums and art galleries.

The Angela Peralta Theater, a showcase for the performing arts, is an especially fine example of this restoration movement.

The tourist discos were closed (no loss), but a very different entertainment venue was packed the night we arrived: the beautifully restored 19th-century Teatro Angela Peralta in the Centro Historico.

Yes, Mazatlan has purified water, so cases of the dreaded turista, so feared by Americans who’ve been afflicted on visits elsewhere in Mexico, are rare here.

Mazatlan, located about 275 miles northwest of Puerto Vallarta on the Pacific Ocean, is considered Mexico’s first resort town and was once a sizzling destination for the American spring-break crowd.

Carolyn Walkup
Mazatlan, located about 275 miles northwest of Puerto Vallarta on the Pacific Ocean, is considered Mexico’s first resort town and was once a sizzling destination for the American spring-break crowd.

From the Gulf of Mexico it follows the course of the Rio Grande to the border crossing at El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; westward from that binational conurbation it crosses vast tracts of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Desert, the Colorado River Delta, westward to the binational conurbation of San Diego and Tijuana before reaching the Pacific Ocean.

In recent years it lost popularity to the beaches of Cancun and Riviera Maya on the Gulf of Mexico and the resorts of Cabo San Lucas on the Baja tip.