A Mexican city situated on the U.S.-Mexico border adjacent to its sister city of San Diego, California. Tijuana is the westernmost city in Mexico (the westernmost Mexican population center is located in Isla Guadalupe) and is the largest city in the Mexican State of Baja California and the seat of the municipality of Tijuana. Currently, the Tijuana metropolitan area is the sixth-largest in Mexico, with a population of 1,483,992 [3] 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 modern cities in Mexico.

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 100 km² (40 sq mi). 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.[4]

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.

Legal drinking and gambling attracted U.S nationals, especially during Prohibition in the 1920s. The Avenida Revolución area became the tourist center of the city with casinos such as the Foreign Club, and lodging such as Hotel Caesar's, birthplace of the Caesar Salad.

In 1928, the Agua Caliente Touristic Complex was opened, including hotel, spa, dog-track, private airport, golf course and gambling casino. A year later, the new Agua Caliente Race Trace joined the complex. During the eight years it operated, the Agua Caliente hotel, casino and spa achieved a near mythical status, with Hollywood stars and gangsters flying in and playing. Rita Hayworth was discovered there. Musical nightclub productions were broadcast over the radio. A singer known as "la Faraona" got shot in a love-triangle and gave birth to the myth of a beautiful lady ghost.

Remnants of the Agua Caliente casino can be seen in the outdoor swimming pool and the "minarete" (actually a former incinerator chimney) nearby the southern end of Avenida Sanchez Taboada, on the grounds of what is now the Lazaro Cardenas educational complex.

In 1935, President Cardenas decreed an end to gambling and casinos in Baja California, and the Agua Caliente complex faltered, then closed. It was eventually reopened as a school. The buildings themselves were torn down in the 1970s, and replaced by modern scholastic architecture.

In 1925, the city attempted to shed its negative image of hedonism and lawlessness created by American mob empresarios by renaming itself Zaragoza, but its name soon reverted to Tijuana.

With increased tourism and the large number of Mexican citizens relocating to Tijuana, the city's population grew from 21,971 to 65,364 between 1940 and 1950.

With the decline of nightlife and tourism in the 1950s, the city restructured its tourist industry, by promoting a more family-oriented scene. Tijuana developed a greater variety of attractions and activities to offer its visitors.

Today, the Tijuana-San Ysidro border crossing is the most crossed international land border in the world.[citation needed] Although tourism constitutes a large part of this movement, much is also business related. Tijuana and its surrounding area have become a major industrial center, with numerous maquiladoras, particularly since the advent of NAFTA in 1994.

The Tijuana Cultural Center (CECUT) is composed of a theater, lecture rooms, video rooms, a library, an exhibition hall, the Museum of the Californias, a futuristic planetary movie theater that displays IMAX films, and a restaurant. Since 1992, the CECUT has hosted the Orchestra of Baja California (OBC), it headquarters the Center of Scenic Arts of the Northwest (CAEN) and the Hispanic-American Center for Guitar (CHG). Since 2001, the CECUT receives about a million visitors per year, making it Baja California's most important cultural center. Another important culture center is La Casa de la Cultura, comprising of a school, a theater, and a public library. Dance, painting, music, plastic arts, photography and languages are taught there. The city also has the Instituto Municipal de Arte y Cultura (Municipal Institute of Art and Culture), the Tijuana Wax Museum, and the Museo El Trompo (The Trompo Museum).

Tijuana also has a very active and independent artist community whose internationally recognized work has earned Tijuana the title of "one of the most important new cultural meccas", according to Newsweek. Strange New World, an exhibition of Tijuana's current art scene, is being curated by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and is traveling across the USA in 2006 and 2007[5]. Art collectives like Bulbo and film production like Palenque Filmaciones explore the use of film like the award winning Tijuana Makes Me Happy, media like television bulbo TV and print "bulbo PRESS", to show different realities of Tijuana out of Mexico. In 2004, Tijuana earned international acclaim for an art exhibition displayed on the cement banks of the Tijuana River and along the Mexico/U.S. border fence in Otay Mesa.

Tijuana's most prestigious entertainment center is the Club Campestre de Tijuana golf club, but the Agua Caliente Racetrack would be the most notable that is open to the general public. Parque Morelos has a small zoo and park space; Parque de la Amistad has a small pond, and a running and dirt-bike track. Parque Teniente Guerrero is a park located downtown with a public library and weekend entertainment by clowns.

The most popular tourist attraction is a nightclub show., purchase bootleg brand-name clothing, timepieces, and other personal accessories found globally, as well as manufactured and hand-crafted local curiosities. There are many night clubs, including over a dozen gay clubs but locals and regular tourists avoid touristic hassle over at the clubs at Plaza Fiesta or other areas of the Zona Río without the crowds, heavy marketing, and occasional tourist misbehavior or outright lawbreaking common on the Revolución strip, though the Revolución has been known for its bolstered number of nightclub shows. While still an entertaining town with an enjoyable atmosphere, locals and tourists alike would agree that it has lost its "anything goes" mentality which it had once acquired, a mindset that was dangerous to tourists, locals, and the tourism industry as a whole.

Tijuana possesses a diversity of shopping malls including Plaza Río, Plaza Mundo Divertido, Plaza Monarca, Plaza Carrousel, and Centro Comercial Playas/Plaza Coronado. Plaza Río is the largest mall and is located just a few minutes away from the US border between Paseo de los heroes and the Tijuana River. The mall hosts a Cinépolis and a Cinépolis VIP movie theater, a Sanborns restaurant and a variety of shops, including the large department stores Mas and Dorians. Plaza Mundo Divertido is off of Tijuana's main east-west highway with arcades and rides for the whole family. Plaza Monarca is on a north-south artery known as "Gato Bronco" and is anchored by the movie theater Cinépolis and the grocery chain Gigante. Plaza Carrousel, so named because the mall contains a children's merry-go-round, is minutes from the Cinco y Diez retail hub centered around a former five and dime store. The beach community of Playas de Tijuana saw a burst of construction in 2004, which yielded the Plaza Coronado complex next to the existing Comercial Mexicana-anchored Centro Comercial Playas.