For as long as I remember, Tijuana has been an absolute joke.
This Mexican border town, just south of San Diego is the armpit of Mexico where under-aged American high school students go to drink beer and frat boys go to watch donkey shows. The place is smelly, rundown, dangerous, and nothing like the rest of Mexico. Its name alone has become synonymous with cheap dives and armpits in general.
This wasn’t always the case, however.
I had no idea, but smelly little Tijuana was once the playground of the rich and famous long before the days of Las Vegas. During the 1920s and 1930s, the border town offered up cheap alcohol, casinos, prostitution and horse racing–all of which were impossible to find in California at the time. As a result, a bustling Vegas-style metropolis exploded (and along the way, gave birth to the Caesar salad and the margarita).
Baja’s Atlantis, a very cool West Magazine article by Christopher Reynolds explores this fascinating history of Tijuana and takes the reader along in search of architectural relics of this era, such as the opulent Agua Caliente casino, reputed to be the finest in the world outside of Monte Carlo.
Wow, I had no idea. Talk about a boom-to-bust! Once Vegas opened and prohibition ended, Tijuana withered away to the miserable excuse for a city it is now. I will, however, look upon it with fresh eyes the next time I pass through–thanks to Reynolds’ quest to unearth this fascinating history and teach us something so many of us didn’t know.