The Desert Route of the State of Chihuahua, is a Regional Program for the Touristic Development of the state of Chihuahua, with the intention of triggering touristic and economic activity in the Desertic Region, covering 5 municipalities of the state: Chihuahua, Aldama, Coyame, Ojinaga and Manuel Benavides.
The Program focuses specifically on the strengthening and complementarity of current touristic products, as well as those potential attractions that have in their culture and tradition the fundamental elements that preserve their identity, as well as their own easily identifiable features through their natural environment, its architecture, its gastronomy, its uses and customs.
As design premises, manuals were established that integrate a similar and identifiable architecture as part of a tourist destination that responds to the nature of these sites, which are mostly in fragile natural areas.
The function of the manuals is to integrate the design of replicable prototypes in the triggering projects; however, it is an instrument that can be used in other public or private projects in the area, developing a high-quality architecture that identifies the region of the Chihuahuan desert.
As a result of the diagnosis made for the Tourism Development Program of the Route of the Desert, 7 major potential projects were detected: in Chihuahua, the "Modernization of Federal Highway No. 16" and "Recovery of the Chuvíscar River” were worked on at the preliminary level; in the municipality of Aldama, the executive project "Access to Recreational Services Jagüey" was carried out, consisting of the modernization of a road; while in Coyame the executive projects "Project of Exterior Areas and Services of the Coyame Caverns" and "Remodeling of the Coyame’s DIF Waterpark" were carried out; For the municipality of Ojinaga, the executive project for the "Touristic Lookout of the Pegüis Canyon" was developed and finally, in the municipality of Manuel Benavides, the "Interpretative Center of the Natural Protected Area of the Santa Elena Canyon" was projected; all these under the design premises integrated in the identity manuals.
The architectural program for all the projects was based on the following areas: Tourist Attention, Trade, Infrastructure and Services, in addition to the Exterior Areas; which were distributed in each site, according to the particular intentions of each project.
In its totality, the sum of all the projects resulted in an intervention of about 50,300m2 of land and a total covered area of 3,675m2, to obtain recreational and rest areas that allow tourists to enjoy the natural areas found in the zone.
