The municipality covers a total surface area of and, in 1995, reported a total population of 18,907. In addition to the municipal seat, it contains the settlements of San Antonio de las Alazanas, El Tunal, San Juan de los Dolores, Huachichil, Los Lirios, Mesa de Tablas, Bella Unión, Escobedo, and Jamé.
Artega residents often boast that they have a year-round median temperature of 72○F., and say theirs is the "most perfect" climate in North America.
The area was first inhabited by settlers from Tlaxcala in 1580, who named it San Isidro de las Palomas. On 29 December 1866 it was renamed in honour of General José María Arteaga Magallanes, a 19th-century national hero and governor of the state of Querétaro de Arteaga.
It includes the congregation of Landeros, which was named after an American soldier of Irish descent, which after the army's march through the area in the 1840s, settled there.