Culiacán
capital of the State of Sinaloa, Mexico
Culiacán, officially Culiacán Rosales, is the capital and largest city of Sinaloa in northwestern Mexico. Located within the Culiacán Municipality, the city was founded on 29 September 1531, by the Spanish conquistadors Lázaro de Cebreros and Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán. It was originally named "Villa de San Miguel", in honor of its patron saint Michael the Archangel.
As of the 2020 census, Culiacán had an estimated population of 808,416, making it the 21st most populous city in Mexico. Its metropolitan area, with a population of 1,003,530, was the 17th most populous metropolitan area in Mexico.
The city sits in a valley on the slopes of the Sierra Madre Occidental, at the confluence of the Tamazula and Humaya Rivers, where both join to form the Culiacán River. 55 meters above sea level.
Etymology
The name derives from the Nahuatl colhua ("ancestor" or a tribal name) and the locative –cán ("place"), rendering "place of the Colhua". Some historians alternatively interpret it as "snake place" or "crooked hill". The most accepted theory is "place of the colhuas", or "inhabited by the colhua tribe", and the most frequent meaning is "place of worshiping the god Coltzin".
The public source identifies “Culiacán” as capital of the State of Sinaloa, Mexico. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Culiacán, capital and State.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q211760. VIAF identifies the subject as 159459039. The Library of Congress control number is n81103306. Authority coordinates are 24.790, -107.388. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1531 and 2020.
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This entry incorporates text from “Culiacán” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.