The first non-indigenous inhabitants of the present day Cananea, arrived in 1760 from other parts of the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Spain (colonial México).

The other peak is named La Mariquita ("The Little Mary", 8,123 feet or 2,476 meters above sea level).

In June 1906, a labor dispute erupted into the violent cross-border Cananea strike, that resulted in the death of 23 people and dozens injured, in a fight between the strikers and a posse led by Arizona Rangers from the United States.

It was the first public jail of the city and is currently a museum "Museo de la Lucha Obrera" with exhibitions of photographs and instruments used in mining.

The Heroic City of Cananea, which serves as the head of the municipality, is the seat of local government.

Its council is made up of a municipal president (mayor), a trustee, six councilors elected by majority vote and four by proportional representation.

The municipality is integrated into the following electoral districts for the election of local representatives to the State of Sonora's Legislature and federal representatives to the Mexican Chamber of Deputies: Local: The Agua Prieta-based VII Electoral District of the State of Sonora's Congress.

Eighty percent of the population is directly or indirectly supported by mining companies in Cananea.

In other section they have "Fundidora de Cananea, S.A.", a manufacturer of ball mill liners, and "Road Machinery Company de México, S.A."—which all aforementioned companies together provide approximately 600 jobs and are involved in diverse activities, from cable assembly to steel fabrication.

The intent to open a concrete products industrial park north of Cananea was announced in January 2018 by Ing.

The factories will utilise proprietary fast-cure concrete formulations in combination with the abundant nearly free-of-cost copper slag "escoria"—an aggregate alternative to expensive riverbed-mined gravel.

Over one hundred years of mining activities at Cananea have generated huge manmade mountains of copper slag... thereby providing an ideal, low-cost alternative for supplying graded aggregates for inclusion within those various precast concrete products.

Farming consists mainly of corn, potatoes, beans, sorghum, alfalfa, barley, and apples.

The infrastructure consists of 30 wells, equipped with a system of electrical motors, and 10 kilometers (6 mi) of reinforced canals used for irrigation.