The hamlet of La Tuna, located 110 kilometres to the North of the city, is the birthplace of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, for a long time one of Mexico's most powerful drug lords.

The Sierra Madre Occidental cross Badiragua and provide temperate forest ecosystems in parts of the municipality.

[2] In pre-Hispanic times, the toponymy was applied to a stream because it accurately refers to the flow of Badiraguato (also known as Río Chico), which springs from the Sierra de Los Parra or Surutato and also gave its name to the town with signs established on its banks where it passes to join in the foothills of the mountain range in front of the disappeared town of Alicama.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) was widely criticized for meeting Consuela Loera, aged 92 at the time, and mother of convicted drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, in Badiraguato during the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico.

Lopez Obrador said,[4] She is a 92-year-old lady and I already said, the fatal plague is corruption, not an older adult who deserves all my respect, regardless of who her son is.