Wishful thinking #7: Chapala Railroad Station or Hacienda El Rosario?

Several posters on social media sites such as Facebook have claimed that this image, which dates from the 1920s, shows Avenida González Gallo in Chapala, with the Chapala Railroad Station in the background. The photograph was taken by Guadalajara-based photographer Juan Aráuz Lomeli and first published in 1926. When Aráuz Lomeli published it as a postcard, he added the number 105 and a caption which read, in part, “Camino de autos a Chapala.”

Juan Aráuz Lomeli postcard #105, ca 1926. Camino de autos a Chapala.

Despite some superficial resemblance to the avenue leading to Chapala Railroad Station, the image does not show Chapala. It shows where the road from Guadalajara to Chapala left the city in the 1920s. The building on the right in the distance (then on the outskirts of Guadalajara) was the Hacienda El Rosario.

Comparison of (top) Juan Aráuz Lomeli postcard, ca 1926 of Camino de autos a Chapala with (bottom) present-day Avenida González Gallo, Chapala, looking NE towards Chapala Railroad Station (photographer and date unknown).

And, interestingly, the building in the old postcard still exists. The ex-hacienda, which actually looks nothing like the Chapala Railroad Station, is now used as offices of the Jalisco state Dirección General de Infraestructura Carretera. Its modern address is Prolongación Calle 2 #2357, Colonia Ferrocarril, Guadalajara.

Ex-hacienda El Rosario, July 2020. Photo: Fer Chávez, Google Photos

It’s easy to jump to conclusions too quickly about the views shown on old photographs and postcards. I’ve made similar errors myself over the years, including in my original (now corrected) 2015 post about an 1893 photograph taken by Abel Briquet (1833-1926).

Captions are usually helpful, but not always. One example related to Chapala is a postcard published by Juan Kaiser in about 1910. Despite having the caption ‘Chapala-Market in Mexico,’ it actually shows the market in distant El Salto.

And then there are several attractive early postcards of Tizapán which have nothing to do with Tizapán el Alto on the south side of Lake Chapala but depict scenes in Tizapán, Mexico City. Should you have any vintage postcards of Tizapán el Alto, please get in touch!

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Tony Burton

Tony Burton’s books include “Lake Chapala: A Postcard History” (2022), “Foreign Footprints in Ajijic” (2022), “If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s historic buildings and their former occupants” (2020), (available in translation as “Si Las Paredes Hablaran”), “Mexican Kaleidoscope” (2016), and “Lake Chapala Through the Ages” (2008).

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