Tijuana ( ; Spanish, ), is the largest city of the Mexican state of Baja California, situated on the U.S.-Mexico border adjacent to its sister city of San Diego, California. Tijuana is the westernmost city in Mexico, however, the westernmost population center is located in Isla Guadalupe.

Currently, the Tijuana metropolitan area is the sixth-largest in Mexico, with a population of 1,483,992 and as the San Diego-Tijuana Metropolitan Area it is the 14th largest metropolitan area in North America, at 4,922,723. It is one of the fastest growing cities in Mexico.

History

More settlement of the area took place near the end of the mission era when José María Echendía, governor of the Baja California and Alta California, awarded a large land grant to Santiago Argüello in 1829. This large cattle ranch, Rancho Tía Juana ("Aunt Jane Ranch"), covered .

In 1848, as a result of the Mexican-American War with the United States, Mexico lost all of Alta California. Tijuana acquired a new and distinct character and purpose on the international border. The city began to shed its cattle ranching origins and developed a new socio-economic structure.

1889 marked the beginning of the urban settlement, when descendants of Santiago Argüello and Agustín Olvera entered an agreement to begin development of the city of Tijuana. The date of the agreement, July 11 1889, is recognized as the founding of the city.

Tijuana saw its future in tourism from its inception. From the end of the 19th century to the first decades of the 20th, the city attracted large numbers of Californians coming to Mexico for trade and entertainment. The California land boom of the 1880s attracted the first big wave of tourists, who were called "excursionists" and came looking for echoes of the famous novel "Ramona," by Helen Hunt Jackson.

In 1911, during the Mexican Revolution, revolutionaries claiming loyalty to Ricardo Flores Magón attacked and took over the city for shortly over a month. Federal troops soon arrived and, combined with local loyal militia known as the "defensores de Tijuana," routed the rebels, who fled back across the line and were promptly arrested by the U.S. Army. This event is a source of much local controversy, and the "rebels" are almost universally reviled in Tijuana as "filibusteros".

In 1915, the Panama-California Exposition brought a great number of visitors to the neighboring California city of San Diego. Tijuana took the opportunity to attract these tourists south of the border with a Feria Típica Mexicana - Typical Mexican Fair. This fair included curio shops, regional foods, thermal baths, horse racing and boxing matches.

The first big professional race track was soon thereafter opened in January, 1916, a few meters south of the border gate, near what is now called Pueblo Amigo. It was almost immediately destroyed by the great "Hatfield rainmaker" flood of 1916. Rebuilt in the same general area, it ran horse races until the new Agua Caliente track was opened several miles south and across the river on higher ground, in 1929, one year after the famous casino and hotel complex.