Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Toluca

TOLUCA, or Toloccan, a city of Mexico, the capital of the state of Mexico, on the Mexican National Railway, 45 miles south-west from the federal capital. It lies on the west side of the Anahuac tableland, at the foot of Mount San Miguel de Tutucuitlalpillo, at an elevation of 8653 feet above the sea, being the highest town in the republic next to the mining station of Ameca-meca (which is 8800 feet). Toluca had in 1886 a population of about 12,000, and is usually described as a well-built flourishing town, with fine buildings and clean well-drained streets. But T. M. Brocklehurst, who visited it in 1880, gives an un favourable impression of the place, which presented nothing attractive beyond the Portales, a fine arcade running round a large block of central buildings, with a number of good shops under the arches (Mexico To-day, p. 222). There is also a good theatre, and in the Plaza de los Martires a well-executed white marble monument to the patriot Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. But the Carmen, Vera Cruz, and one or two other churches are dirty and tawdry, with out presenting any striking architectural features. The city is traversed by a foul stream flowing at the bottom of a barranca or deep ravine, along whose banks are herded numerous swine in a half-wild state, which supply the hams and sausages for which the place is noted. Here also soap and wax candles are manufactured and supplied to the surrounding districts. In the south-west the Nevado de Toluca, an extinct snow-clad volcano with a flooded crater, rises to a height of 15,156 feet above sea-level.

Although Toluca appears to have been one of the earliest Toltec settlements in Anahuac, its foundation dating probably from the 6th century, it has preserved no remains of its ancient grandeur, nor have any monuments been discovered in the district in any way comparable to those of Cholula, Tula, Teotihuacan, and other ancient centres of Toltec culture. According to M. Charnay, Toluca formed one of the chief starting points of the great migrations which, after the overthrow of the Toltec empire by the Chichimec irruption in the llth century, moved in two parallel streams south wards, converging at Copan and spreading their arts and industries over Chiapas, Yucatan, and Guatemala (Ancient Cities of the New World, 1887, p. 125).