During the First World War, in 1915, Norwegian speculators intended to make Chapala a luxury resort town.

An extensive dam, 8 kilometers long to provide dry land with plots for luxury dwellings.

In the late 1940s the American writer Tennessee Williams settled in Chapala for a while to work on a play called The Poker Night, which later became A Streetcar Named Desire.

Tony Burton describes early tourism in his book “Lake Chapala through the ages: an anthology of travellers' tales.”[4] Chapala, along with its namesake lake, is well established as a weekend getaway destination primarily for inhabitants of the city of Guadalajara.

Most of the area's immigrant population (originating primarily from the United States and Canada) reside not in the city proper but in and around Ajijic, a village of approximately 11,000 inhabitants located approximately 5 miles west of Chapala.