ABOUT THE HISTORY OF LOS ALGODONES

the rich history of Los Algodones (“The Cottons”) is very hard to find, when you walk into Los Algodones today you see a small Mexican town with 350 dentists in a three by four block radius, which makes it the town with the most dentists per capita in the world, “Molar City” but how it came to be that town, is very interesting.

With the gold rush and more and more Immigrants heading to California, México needed to secure more land in the California area. The Mexican President gave large amounts of land to his family, friends and to many of his trusted military officers, claiming the territory as Mexican occupied. That is how retired General Guillermo Andrade came to be in Baja California.

As the Colorado River started growing in a commercial way, as the “Gateway to the West”, with the steamboats that carried provisions to the west in California. Progress continued and  soon the Southern Pacific Railroad opened a connection, through Los Algodones, to the West, in order to avoid the sand dunes. The railroad brought immigrants as labor, from all over including China and some of whom settled in and around Los Algodones. In 1878, the border line between the 2 countries was established. With the completion of the transcontinental rail systems, the steamboat era ended and the agricultural era began. The Colorado River soon gave way to building on the farming, growing cotton and vegetables in the area.

During the prohibition era, Los Algodones saw its first tourism boom for the cantinas and bars. As Sandra, whom we interviewed, puts it: “Los Algodones was the official CANTINA OF THE VALLEY with 48 bars and very little of anything else here. The first block, coming from the border, was the train depot on the right and on the left was a parking lot for a cantina/restaurant, where Americans came for the burritos all the time, and next door on the corner was the gas station”.

With The United States occupied with World War II, there was a huge demand for farm labor, the train transported workers from all over México to work the fields in the U.S. on the Braceros Program. Mexicans, like Don Ramon Muñoz who worked as a Bracero, were hired to work in the fields and other handyman duties in The United States. Many Mexican-Americans trace their family’s roots in the US to their fathers’ or grandfathers’ arrival as braceros.

Morelos Dam, the last dam on the Colorado River, was built from 1948-50, it diverts its water from the Colorado River to highly developed crop lands in the Mexicali Valley. The Morelos dam brought jobs with good wages. Their Children would take the train every day from Los Algodones to Mexicali, to go to school every day.