Mexican cities, found on the map

Forty-three dots and no labels: every state capital, and every other city over half a million. The states are gone from this map, so all you have to go on is the coastline, the border and where the country narrows.

43 to find, 8 a run.

6 rounds, 6 of 8 to pass each. Pass one and its places are yours.

⚔️ Challenge someone to Mexican cities

Get to know Mexico City before you go.

Explore Mexico City through two interactive maps, fifteen sights and a ten-section course.

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Get to know Tijuana before you go.

Explore Tijuana through two interactive maps, fifteen sights and a ten-section course.

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43 cities · 5 regions

What the map tells you about each one

The paragraph the game shows when you find a place, for the 13 of the 43 that have one. Reading them first is not cheating.

Northwest Mexico9 on the map

Chihuahua: Chihuahua City is the capital of the largest state in the country and stands at about 1,440 meters on the high plain east of the Sierra Madre. Miguel Hidalgo, who began the war of independence, was tried and shot here in 1811. Pancho Villa lived in the city in his last years, and the house is now the museum of the revolution.
Ciudad Juárez: Juárez faces El Paso across the Rio Grande and was called El Paso del Norte itself until 1888, when it was renamed for Benito Juárez, who ran the republic from here during the French intervention. It is the largest city in Chihuahua and one of the first places the maquiladora program put assembly plants, in 1965, which is the shape of the border economy that followed.
La Paz: La Paz is the capital of Baja California Sur and its largest city, with about 250,000 people. Pearls made it: the oyster beds in the gulf here were fished from the sixteenth century and fished out by the 1940s. The ferry to Mazatlán and Topolobampo across the water is still how most freight reaches the southern half of the peninsula.
Tijuana: Tijuana is the largest city in Baja California and one of the largest in northern Mexico. The San Ysidro crossing into San Diego is the busiest land border crossing in the world, with tens of millions of crossings a year, and the two cities work as one labor market split by a fence. Prohibition in the United States built the town: the bars and the racetrack were on this side of the line from 1920.

Also on the mapCuliacán · Durango · Hermosillo · Mazatlán · Mexicali

Northeast Mexico6 on the map

Monterrey: Monterrey anchors the second largest metropolitan area in the country at about 5.3 million people, and it is the wealthiest large city in Mexico. It sits in a gap in the Sierra Madre Oriental under the split peak of the Cerro de la Silla, and it grew on steel: the Fundidora foundry opened in 1900 and ran until 1986, and its site is now the park in the middle of the city.

Also on the mapCiudad Victoria · Matamoros · Saltillo · Tampico · Torreón

West Mexico and the Bajío10 on the map

Guadalajara: Guadalajara holds about 1.4 million people in the municipality and 5.3 million across the metropolitan area, the third largest in Mexico. It was founded in 1542 after three earlier attempts on other sites were abandoned or burned. Mariachi took its modern form in the countryside around it, and the town of Tequila is about sixty kilometers to the northwest under the volcano of the same name.

Also on the mapAguascalientes · Colima · Guanajuato · León · Morelia · Querétaro · San Luis Potosí · Tepic · Zacatecas

Central Mexico7 on the map

Mexico City: The city is the most populous in North America, with about 9.2 million people in the sixteen alcaldías and some 21 million in the wider valley. It stands where Tenochtitlan stood, on an island in a lake that the Spanish spent three centuries draining, and the cathedral and the palace on the main square are built on the rubble of the Aztec ceremonial center. The water it pumps out from under itself is the reason the ground is going down.
Puebla: Puebla was laid out on empty ground in 1531 as a Spanish town on the road from the coast to the capital, which is why its center is a grid rather than a Mexican city rebuilt on an older one. The Talavera pottery made here has been produced since the sixteenth century. The battle of 5 May 1862, in which a smaller Mexican force beat the French army outside the city, is what Cinco de Mayo remembers.

Also on the mapCuernavaca · Nezahualcóyotl · Pachuca · Tlaxcala · Toluca

The south, the Gulf and Yucatán11 on the map

Acapulco: The bay here is deep and nearly circular, which made it the American end of the Manila galleon route: from 1565 until 1815 a ship came in from the Philippines once a year with silk and porcelain and left with silver. In the 1950s it was the resort Hollywood flew to. Hurricane Otis came ashore as a category 5 storm in October 2023 after strengthening faster than almost any storm on record.
Cancún: Cancún did not exist in 1970. The site was chosen by the Mexican government, partly by computer model, as somewhere to build a resort city from nothing, and a few hundred people lived in the area when the work started. It is now the most populous city in Quintana Roo and its airport is the busiest in the country for international arrivals.
Mérida: Mérida was founded in 1542 on the Maya city of Tʼhó, and the stone of the older buildings went into the cathedral, which was finished in 1598 and is one of the oldest on the American mainland. The city grew rich on henequen, the agave fiber that made the world’s binder twine, and the mansions along the Paseo de Montejo were built with it.
Oaxaca: The city sits at about 1,550 meters where three valleys meet, and its historic center is a World Heritage Site along with Monte Albán on the ridge above it. Benito Juárez, the only indigenous president Mexico has had, was born in the state and studied here. The cooking of these valleys, and its seven moles, is the reason a good deal of the country comes to eat.
Veracruz: Veracruz is the oldest European-founded city in Mexico, established by Hernán Cortés in 1519, and it has been the country’s main Atlantic port ever since. Everything that arrived from Spain arrived here, and so did every invasion: the Americans in 1847 and again in 1914, the French twice. The state capital is Xalapa, in the hills 90 kilometers inland, not this city.

Also on the mapCampeche · Chetumal · Chilpancingo · Tuxtla Gutiérrez · Villahermosa · Xalapa

Now find all 43 on the map

How this one works

How many cities are on the map?

43. Every one of them is on the map, and a run asks 8 of them. Pass a round and the places you found in it drop out of the pool, so the next run is what you have left.

What is a round?

A run of 8 questions, and 6 right passes it. 6 rounds cover the whole map, and the counter at the top of the Mexico page counts the ones behind you. Passing is what banks a round's finds: miss the mark and nothing is taken off the map, so every place that round asked about is still there to be asked again. A round is always the places you have not found yet, and when fewer than five are left it is topped up with a few you have found as review, so the last round is never one or two questions. Three quarters of it passes it.

Can I start the map over?

Yes. "Reset this map" under the counter puts all 43 back in the pool and sets the rounds to zero the moment you press it, so the whole map is there to be found again from nothing. It clears this map only; the other maps of Mexico keep their progress.

Do I need an account?

No. The game plays in the page, and a guest's progress is kept in their own browser. Signing in carries it between devices and earns XP for a run.

What happens when I get one wrong?

The map names what you actually hit, then lights up the right answer in green and tells you something about the place. Missing one is how most of this map gets learned.

The other maps of Mexico

Mexican states32 to find Mexican waters28 to find

The same map for other countries

North America

Oceania

South America

All of Mexico’s maps together on the Mexico atlas page, the country itself on the Mexico guide, and the other two hundred on the world map.