Visiting the Acosta Mine Museum (Museo de Sitio Mina de Acosta) in Real del Monte, Hidalgo State, Mexico
In my last post, I wrote about the English Cemetery – Panteón Inglés. Here I detail our visit to the Museo de Sitio Mina de Acosta.
As I mentioned before, Real del Monte is a town with a history of mining.
In the 1500s, Gold and silver were discovered. The Spanish started mining it soon after.
Everything was dug out by hand and brought to the surface on the backs of the men and women who worked 18 hours a day with just a meagre supply of pulque to keep them going (typical exploitation by the Spanish).
The mine was also prone to flooding.
With the downturn in tin mining in Cornwall, England, miners there were encouraged to start new lives in other parts of the world, in particular, in Real del Monte.
They brought with them mining equipment, in particular, steam engines to help facilitate pumping out the water from the mines.
1,500 tonnes of equipment arrived in Veracruz in May 1825. It took nearly a year to get it all to Real del Monte. They had to build their own roads!
With the arrival of the miners from Cornwall, shafts were built, tracks laid. Production increased. People got rich.
The mines were in use until 1985. Today the Acosta mine is a museum.
I visited in 2022, but according to the official website, the mine is currently open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am until 5 pm.
Google Maps states that the entrance fee is now 100 MXN.
I am not averse to going underground. Back in the UK in another life, I have visited the Cwmbran Colliery and the Corris Uchaf Slate Mine in Wales and the Blue John Mine and the Speedwell Cavern in the Peak District, England.
I have not been down a tin mine in Cornwall but hey, this is a gold and silver mine in Hidalgo State, Mexico.
How to get from CDMX to Pachuca and onto Real del Monte
Futura runs buses out of Central de Autobuses del Norte (the north bus station) to Pachuca. The same one used for Tula and Teotihuacán.
You can check the latest schedule on Click Bus. Journey time is about 2 hours, depending on the traffic, of course.
On arrival in Pachuca, exit the bus station and cross the road and find white colectivos with a green stripe, going to ‘Centro’.
These take 10-15 minutes (4 km). Get off somewhere near the Benito Juárez market, where you will find colectivos to Real del Monte that depart when full and take about 20 minutes (11 km).
Arrival point in Real del Monte (Combis Real del Monte – Pachuca)
Then it’s about 1 mile (1.6 km) to the Acosta Mine:
