3 min
Overview
With a few exceptions, coastal San Diego has become so heavily urbanized that its open spaces bear the marks of extensive development. Interstate 5 bisects each of North County’s six intertidal lagoons. Extensive suburban housing developments bound open spaces like a desert of concrete around an oasis of sage-scrub. Much of the former habitat has disappeared completely under the weight of California’s second-largest city. It therefore comes as a surprise that the one corner of coastal San Diego that suffers least from development should be so lightly traveled. Visitation at Border Field has historically been very low in large part due to numerous misconceptions about what hikers will find there. One obstacle, at least to the uninitiated, is that the road to International Friendship Park (Border Field’s signature landmark) often lies underwater when the road floods. Given that the road is flooded the vast majority of the year, cars cannot usually reach International Friendship Park. Visitors from around the world seeking to sample the area’s natural, cultural, and historical features turn around, not realizing that the park’s highlights are so easily accessible by foot. In addition to a mixture of coastal habitats that are now all but vanished from heavily urbanized San Diego, Border Field also memorializes U.S. and Mexico history dating back to the end of the United States-Mexico War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Part of this treaty mandated the establishment of a new border across the recently annexed Alta California territories, and the joint planning commission began its survey at Border Field State Park where International Friendship Park currently stands. Other San Diegans familiar with the Tijuana River’s ecological challenges might also assume that the area is heavily polluted. The Tijuana River runs through the city of Tijuana south of the International Border. As the channelized river passes through the urban center, it carried along an accumulation of detritus that once marred the river’s na
Trail Stats
8.5 km
42 m
16 m
0 m
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