The Pinacate Peaks lie just north of the fishing resort of Puerto Peñasco. The tallest of the peaks is Cerro del Pinacate (also called Volcan Santa Clara). The Mexican Spanish word pinacate is derived from the Nahuatl word for the endemic desert stink beetle, pinacatl.Padre Eusebio Kino, founder of many Spanish missions in the Sonoran Desert, explored here in 1698 and several times later. NASA sent its astronauts here, from 1965 to 1970, to train for lunar excursions given the similarity of the terrain to the lunar surface
November 11, 2015