Mata Ortiz Pottery

The original inhabitants of Mata Ortiz were part of the Casas Grandes civilization, a vast network of villages in Northern Mexico. Casas Grandes culture thrived from the eleventh century A.D. until about 1350. Near the present-day site of Mata Ortiz stood the city of Paquimé. In this highly developed civilization achievements included hand-built ceramics featuring maze-like motifs, animal figures, and stone-polished surfaces. The people of Paquime mysteriously vanished around 1400, leaving behind a legacy of exquisite pottery.

Some three hundred years later the region became home to the Apaches who controlled large parts of what is now Chihuahua, Sonora, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Around the turn of this century large stands of timber were harvested in the Sierra Madre above Mata Ortiz, and an important railroad complex was established in the town. Entrepreneurs met the many needs of the railroad gangs by building houses stores and workshops, all of adobe. From 1910 until the 1920s, Pancho Villa and the Mexican Revolution swept through the area bringing great changes in land distribution.

The railroad industry remained until the mid- 1960s when the yards were relocated to nearby Nuevo Casas Grandes. Mata Ortiz fell into hard times. Then, about ten years later Juan Quezada rediscovered the ancient pottery-making process and an artistic and economic renaissance was born.