Los Mochis was founded in 1893 by a group of American utopian socialists who were adherents of Albert Kimsey Owen, an American civil engineer who built the first irrigation ditches in the valley. The colony, organized under the principles of utopian socialism, survived for 30 years. Albert K. Owen, the American civil engineer who came to do studies for the construction of a railway, was enchanted by Ohuira Bay and imagined the city of the future, where railways and shipping lines converged to ship throughout the entire world. Today, the port city of Topolobampo continues to be developed and may one day reach Owen's dream.
The city itself was founded by a businessman named Benjamin F. Johnston, who came to make a fortune in the cultivation of sugarcane. The founding of the sugar mill produced a population boom in 1903.
Benjamin F. Johnston arrived at Topolobampo attracted by the city project of Owen. Johnston saw an opportunity to exploit resources such as sugar cane and together with Edward Lycan, who had been linked to Zacar�as Ochoa, owner of a Trapiche (raw sugar mill) named "El �guila", initiated the construction of a sugar mill. Ochoa died suddenly, and Johnston seized businesses that Lycan and Ochoa founded. "El �guila Sugar Refining Company" later became "United Sugar Company."
In 1898, Johnston laid the first stone of the sugar mill and drove the rapid growth of the city around it. The first harvest was welcomed in the year 1903.
Johnston was a very powerful and influential businessman, so powerful that he was the one that drew the street plans for Los Mochis, a modern city with wide and straight streets. Although it was not until 1903 when it was recognized along with Topolobampo, as a city. On 20 April 1903 a decree is founded by the mayor of Los Mochis, during the state government of Francisco Ca�edo. In 1916, establishing the town of Ahome and since 1935 the municipal seat of the latter is located in the city of Los Mochis
