Mapimí is a silver town that outlived its silver, and the architecture shows it. It sits in the Bolsón de Mapimí, the great desert basin of northern Durango and southern Chihuahua, where the horizon is flat, the air is dry and the sky is mostly empty. The town was founded in the sixteenth century to work mines in the hills nearby, and it grew rich enough to build a church, stone houses and a plaza. Later it was caught up in the fighting of the Mexican Revolution and the town's old buildings still carry the weight of those years.
The historic centre is small and walkable, and the 'architectonic ensemble' listed by UNESCO as part of the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro is the mix of mining-era houses, plaza and parish church. The Camino Real was the silver road, running from Mexico City up to Santa Fe in New Mexico, carrying bullion north to south and supplies, settlers and missionaries the other way for roughly three centuries. Mapimí was one of the stops, and the old road ran through the very landscape you are riding in.
The riding is long, straight and honest. The highways cross creosote bush and mesquite scrub with distant sierras at the edge of vision, and in places the road simply points at the horizon and goes. That makes it easy riding, but there are real hazards: cattle, potholes, trucks, and the wind, which can lean you over on the exposed stretches. Summer is brutally hot, winter nights can be near freezing, and distances between services are large, so keep the tank topped up. Mapimí itself is a town of about five and a half thousand, so you should find fuel and food here, and Bermejillo, further on, is larger.
The Zone of Silence, a patch of desert near here that has a reputation for odd radio behaviour and meteorites, draws a certain kind of visitor. The truth is more mundane, but the empty desert is still strong stuff. Take water, start early, and give yourself time in the plaza, where a cold drink and a bench in the shade do more for you than any monument.