Where Is Desert Mexico?

Two Deserts, a Mountain Wall and a Sea

Mexico is home to two vast desert regions, both contiguous with the United States. The Sonoran Desert wraps around the Sea of Cortez, covering nearly all of the Baja California peninsula, its islands and most of Sonora. The Chihuahuan Desert fills the high basins of Chihuahua, Coahuila and Durango. Between them runs the Sierra Madre Occidental, and it makes them strangers: the Sonoran low and warm, fed by winter and summer rains and crowded with tree-sized cacti; the Chihuahuan high and cold in winter, watered in summer, and ruled by agaves, yuccas and small, round cacti.

• 63 ftthe tallest cardón ever measured, in Baja California, the tallest cactus species on Earth
• 200 mthe tallest dunes of the Gran Desierto de Altar
• 2rainy seasons in the Sonoran Desert, winter and summer
• 5 millionyears since the Sea of Cortez began to open

1. The DivideSierra Madre Occidental

   A volcanic mountain wall running down western Mexico for hundreds of miles. It catches the summer monsoon, and it keeps the two deserts apart: the low Sonoran to the west, the high Chihuahuan to the east.

2. The Sonoran DesertLow, warm and green

   Mild winters and two rainy seasons make it the lushest of the warm deserts, a forest of cardón, organ pipe and senita cactus, ironwood, palo verde and elephant trees.

   • Pinacate: The Black Desert
3. Baja CaliforniaA peninsula torn from the mainland

   About 775 miles of desert mountains between the Pacific and the Sea of Cortez. The boojum grows almost nowhere else, and the gray whales calve in the lagoons of El Vizcaíno.

   • Desert Roads of Baja California Norte
   • Bahía Coyote and Baja California Sur
   • San José del Cabo Estero
4. The Sea of CortezThe young sea

   It opened only about five million years ago as Baja pulled away from the mainland. Jacques Cousteau is said to have called it the aquarium of the world, and its islands and coasts are a World Heritage Site.

   • Isla Espiritu Santo Sketch and Photography Journal
5. El Pinacate and the Gran DesiertoLava and sand

   Black volcanic craters beside North America’s largest field of active sand dunes, some of them 200 meters high. The whole of it became a World Heritage Site in 2013.

   • Pinacate: The Black Desert
6. The Chihuahuan DesertHigh basins between two ranges

   The largest desert in North America, a high country of cold winters and summer rain between the Sierra Madre Occidental and Oriental, a land of agaves, yuccas and small cacti. At Cuatro Ciénegas, spring-fed pools still grow living stromatolites.

   • Yuccas of the World