- [Announcer] "Searching for San Diego: San Ysidro" is made possible by members of KPBS, and by our program funders, the California Council for the Humanities, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and by Wells Fargo Bank, trustee for the Masserini Charitable Trust and the French Fund.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Over 47 million people cross the United States-Mexico border each year at the San Ysidro port of entry.

It is the single busiest border crossing in the world, but to most people, San Ysidro is only a freeway exit and a trolley stop.

(lively music) Yet if you look beyond the lights and traffic, a different San Ysidro emerges, a community of 26,000, a small town caught between the pressures of the border and the whims of San Diego.

With the changing relations with Mexico and the growing significance of the border, San Ysidro may soon become among the most important communities in San Diego.

(bright music) The land which is San Ysidro lies at the southernmost point of California.

In the earliest days, Kumeyaay Indians inhabited the rich fertile land of the Tijuana River Valley.

The land later became part of Mexico.

In 1848 at the end of the war between the United States and Mexico, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo established the border between the two countries, cutting through the Tijuana River.

By the turn of the century, San Ysidro, now part of the United States, was sparsely populated, consisting of little more than a customs office in the general store.

It was William E. Smythe, journalist and irrigation expert who put San Ysidro on the map.

In 1909, he arranged the purchase of 550 acres of land in the Tijuana River Valley, with the dream of founding the first of many utopian farm communities across the nation.

He called it Little Landers.

- William E. Smythe was my grandmother's grandfather.

He was an easterner who got involved in journalism, and came out West in search, really, of the American values.

He felt people should get away from cities, that they would provide enough farming for their own needs, but also make some extra money by selling their produce in the city of San Diego.

And by working cooperatively, he felt that everyone could enjoy a good life, and that was what the goal was in San Ysidro.

- This is the house that your great-great-grandfather built, and Mr. Smythe was one of the first people to have a completed house, and it was the center of all the social activities for a long time.

- [Narrator] Joyce Hettich is 91 years old, a former school teacher and San Ysidro's resident historian.

- I think he was one of the most terrific people that California's ever had.

He got all of these people from different localities.

Many of them were retired, and not any of them were really rich.

He mixed them all up into a very wonderful community, and everybody took care of everybody else.

- [Narrator] At its peak, 300 people, almost all white middle American Protestants, joined with Smythe to seek their dream of a little land and a living, but in 1916 tragedy struck.

Unusually heavy rains caused severe flooding of the Tijuana River Valley, leaving 135 settlers homeless, and putting an end to the Little Landers experiment.

But the village of San Ysidro was spared, and many settlers joined other residents to build a new community.

- This is the first piece of ground my father bought when he came here in 1911.

There was 100 acres of ground here.

When I was started grammar school, I rode horseback from our ranch house over there about two and a half miles right across, between two and two and a half miles, right across the valley here, over to the San Ysidro School, and so when the weather was nice.

In the river bottom, the water was good.

We had wells down.

We could drink that water.

But every gate, any crop you wanted to grow, from celery, tomatoes, I don't care what it was, 'cause it was a real low in salt content, very, very low, real sweet water.

(lively music) - [Narrator] Prohibition enacted in 1919 made Tijuana a boom town as thousands of Americans crossed the border for a weekend of drinking and gambling at the racetracks.

Tijuana's elegant Agua Caliente Racetrack and Casino became one of the favorite getaways for the wealthy and elite.

And everyone who crossed the border came through San Ysidro.

- I used to go down there on Sunday evening or Sunday afternoon, and sit there and watch the cars come outta Mexico.

There'd be four and five abreast going through US Immigration, US Customs, and I saw many a movie star, and I'd seen Clara Bow.

I've seen Douglas Fairbanks.

I saw Buster Keaton, Bing Crosby.

It was an awful glamorous life.

- [Narrator] One of San Ysidro's most well-known residents was Frank Booze Beyer, part owner of the Sunset Inn and Agua Caliente Racetrack.

He is remembered as a philanthropist who donated a hefty $7,000 to build the San Ysidro Library, constructed in 1924 and still used today.

(bright music) By the 1930s, former Little Landers families lived side by side with employees of the racetracks.

Their grandchildren went to school with children of Japanese farmers and Swiss dairymen.

The population of San Ysidro was still mostly white, with a growing percentage of Mexicans.

(bright music) Still primarily an agricultural community, the Tijuana River Valley was filled with farms and dairies.

Most people led simple lives.

Ed Cuen's father moved his family from Tijuana to San Ysidro in 1933.

Six years later, he bought the San Ysidro Feed Store, which soon became one of the mainstays of the community.

Even at age seven, Ed worked at the feed store before going to school.

- I had to get up at 5:00 in the morning, and bring four bails of hay of each kind.

Four bales of Timothy, four bales of a straw, four bales of alfalfa, four bales of oil hay, and put it in front of the feed store so my dad wouldn't have to go back there, and behind the feed store and get 'em.

And before I went to school, that's what I had to do.

And then when I came home from school, I just had to wait on customers.

That place was booming.

It was real good.

(bright music) - [Narrator] There were strong bonds between the people of San Ysidro and the people of Tijuana.

Many San Ysidroans had relatives across the border.

No fences separated the two countries.

Tijuana families who could afford it sent their children to school in San Ysidro.

- When I came here to teach, the teachers had no money for anything in school that we could use, and each teacher was expected to take at least four Tijuana children on tuition basis.

We charged $18 and 75 cents a month, and that was the only money that we could use.

- [Narrator] Even with its close proximity to Mexico, San Ysidro retained the feeling of a small town with a quiet main street, one theater, a few small shops, a volunteer fire department, and Caesar Soto's Drugstore and Soda Fountain, which served as the local gathering spot.

- We'd go to the drugstore in San Ysidro, Caesar's Drugstore, and get a milkshake every day.

For a quarter, you'd get two big glasses.

It was neat.

San Ysidro was a little hometown that everybody knew each other.

It was a neat town.

- [Narrator] With the outbreak of World War II, San Ysidro's sons went off to war, but for the Segawa family and other Japanese farmers in the Tijuana River Valley, life took a bitter turn.

All Japanese living on the west coast were ordered to internment camps for the duration of the war.

In 1946, Ben Segawa returned to San Ysidro, a community he remembers as being open-minded and accepting.

- Oh, the feeling and the memories that I have of San Ysidro, it was probably the best of my time growing up.

I'm Japanese, and most of my friends are Hispanics.

We had Caucasians there.

We had Sammy Wolfdorf, I believe he might've been Jewish.

I mean, we had our own melting pot.

We had our own United Nations, and nobody knew that.

We're just people.

(bright music) - It was great growing up in San Ysidro.

When I was growing up, it was a real small little kind of a village.

There's about 2,000 of us here, and it was very tight-knit community.

It was a fun place to grow up, and a really healthy, wholesome kind of Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn kind of a place to grow up, but on the border, so it had that flavor to it.

- [Narrator] As Andrea was growing up in the 1950s, San Ysidro faced a peril that was about to threaten village life.

South of the border, Tijuana was experiencing rapid unregulated growth, and sewage was spilling into the Tijuana River, contaminating San Ysidro's groundwater.

North of San Ysidro, the Tijuana River had been pumped far beyond capacity.

Wells were dug dangerously below sea level, and salt water seeped in, polluting the water supply, and destroying crops.

San Ysidro's water became a combination of sewage and salt.

- The water they had wasn't fit for human consumption, really.

There were a lot of they were still using it in the homes, and some of 'em was boiling it and drinking it.

Some of 'em was boiling it to cook with something like that.

Others was using it the way it was, trusting to God to take care of 'em.

- [Narrator] 15 miles to the north, the city of San Diego was beginning an era of expansion, and wanted to annex San Ysidro and the South Bay.

Most people in San Ysidro were skeptical of becoming part of the big city, but in 1957, they felt they had no choice.

For 20 years, farmers had fought a legal battle against the California Water and Telephone Company to stop the overpumping of the river, and they wanted the resources of San Diego to secure a new source of fresh water.

Vic Stewart was one of the people who championed the cause for annexation.

- That was one of our selling points to get them to annex the city of San Diego, that they would get water, 'cause the city of San Diego promised us water, promised us the same police protection, everything they had in the city of San Diego, and they promised us a flood control system for the Tijuana Valley.

- [Narrator] By the late '50s, San Ysidro was around 60% Spanish speaking.

Still a small community of 3,000, San Ysidro was beginning to feel the effects of a changing world.

Increased drug smuggling and illegal immigration resulted in a chain-link fence being erected across the border.

- I remember when they built the Border Patrol station.

It was way at one end of the community up on a hill, and there was nothing around it.

When you're a child, you don't understand all this.

We thought that the Border Patrol could see in your house, and that they could see whether you had, you know, a housekeeper who was there taking care of you, and if you did, and they were from Mexico, then they were gonna come and get them.

- [Narrator] Over the next decade, the people of San Ysidro were feeling the true impact of annexation.

Decisions were made in San Diego and implemented in San Ysidro without its residents having a voice in what was happening to their community.

In the '70s, San Diego constructed two major freeways through the middle of downtown San Ysidro, cutting the community in half, and displacing old-time residents.

- We used to live on San Ysidro Boulevard right next to the feed store.

That's where my dad bought this house for $500, and then he bought the lot next door.

The freeway took it all, store and the house.

The feed store used to be right underneath the bridge.

Where the sign is that says North 805, that's where the feed store was.

Okay, now when I look around here, I see a different town.

It isn't San Ysidro anymore.

- [Narrator] In 1970, the first low income housing project opened its doors in San Ysidro.

Villa Nueva was run by the socially minded Catholic order of Augustinians who hoped to realize an experiment in low-income housing.

But problems began to occur when the nearly 2,000 new residents of Villa Nueva arrived in San Ysidro, itself having a population of only 6,000.

- As we started evolving as a community with some of the same urban problems that we see in other communities, Villa Nueva became a real convenient scapegoat that you could blame for this.

Oh, we never used to have drugs here until Villa Nueva came.

Oh, we never used to have gangs here until Villa Nueva came.

Oh, we never used to have this until Villa Nueva came.

Well, that just became a symbol for the lack of control I think that people were feeling in their own lives.

- [Narrator] By 1981, San Ysidro's population had reached 14,000, 95% Spanish speaking, many poor, and many new immigrants.

Once a stable small community, San Ysidro became a stopover point for people coming north from Mexico.

Border Patrol Jeeps and helicopters, highway patrol and blinding spotlights infiltrated the community.

(helicopter blades whirring) (indistinct speaking) - [Narrator] The community at the border was becoming indistinguishable from the border.

(melancholy music) - During the big devaluation of the Mexican peso in '82, San Ysidro became practically a frontier town.

Overnight, you can practically say within 10 days, you had between 100 and 150 money exchange houses from one.

It was not uncommon to see hundreds of people walking on the streets with cash on their hands.

I couldn't put my finger on how much money was being transacted here in San Ysidro, but it was in the millions of dollars.

Being that there was so much money being transacted here in San Ysidro, very few dollars stayed in the community.

It took the heart of the community out.

The village atmosphere, it was gone.

Up to this day, if you walk along San Ysidro Boulevard, all you see is money exchanges.

- [Narrator] Within two miles of the money exchanges, once fertile fields lay idle.

Farmers were still waiting for the flood control channel, part of San Diego's promise for annexation.

Federal funds had been allocated.

Mexico had nearly completed construction of their portion of the flood control channel, but when Pete Wilson was elected mayor of San Diego in 1971, he put a halt to the project already 10 years in the making.

- Pete Wilson called Dan Durland, who was the congressman in this area at that time, and he says, "I'm the new mayor of San Diego.

The city does not want the Tijuana Valley flood control system."

- [Narrator] Mayor Pete Wilson's decision to abandon the flood control channel in order to keep the Tijuana River Valley undeveloped left the valley vulnerable to flooding.

In 1980, the Tijuana River, which flooded in 1916, 1921, and 1937, flooded again.

Without the flood control channel, much of the valley ended up underwater.

It would be the first of three floods in the next 13 years, causing more than $50 million in property damage.

- Well, we felt just left out and deserted, slapped in the face, kicked where you sit down.

Some people think that we got what we deserved, 'cause we shouldn't have been annexed to city of San Diego to start with, and it's like I say, everybody's had their own opinion of it, but my opinion was that we got sold down the river.

- [Narrator] What many people felt was the last blow to San Ysidro came on July 18th, 1984, when James Oliver Huberty opened fire in the local McDonald's, killing 21 people.

San Ysidro was thrust into the national spotlight.

- You don't want San Ysidro to be remembered as where the massacre happened.

The situation at McDonald's, in one sense of the word, it brought some of the community together, because being of Mexican descent, the community is very religious.

They created a shrine at the incident location.

Eventually, the place was dedicated.

It became an extension of Southwestern College as it stands today.

(musician singing in Spanish) - Everything that has happened in San Ysidro that is positive has been because the community has pushed for it.

For example, Cesar Chavez Rec Center, the community really pushed for that.

The health center there, the same thing, the community pushed for that, and it got all that because the people came forward and demanded it.

- [Narrator] In 1966, there was only one doctor servicing San Ysidro.

In response, the Club de Madres, originally a social club of Spanish speaking mothers, organized to advocate for community health services.

Today, the San Ysidro Health Center is a testament to their efforts.

The Club de Madres still meets as a social organization, addressing issues as they arise.

- My name name is Andrea Skorepa.

I was born and raised here in the community.

I am a product of the '60s, so I thought that it was my burden to go out and change the world, and solve poverty, and right all the wrongs, so I joined VISTA as a VISTA volunteer, and was sent to South Texas, and was trained as a community organizer.

And the thing that I realized when I got there was that that little place where I was sent was better off than this community, so it made up my mind very easily then that I needed to come back here and take care of business at home.

- [Narrator] Andrea now heads up Casa Familia, an activist organization and a multi-service agency working with primarily low income and Spanish speaking residents.

- I think that the fact that Latinos now are the majority of this community also means that in the future, there's going to be a difference in the way that we, as we come into more and more control over our own destinies, are going to be able to fashion our community.

(bright music) - [Narrator] In 1987, after two decades of unrealized plans, San Ysidro residents met with R/UDAT, an organization of architects and planners to develop a blueprint for the future of their community.

While much of R/UDAT remains a vision, it created a momentum as citizens of San Ysidro have become more involved in the decisions which shape their lives.

While annexation brought San Ysidro under San Diego's control, the school district remained independent.

It has had a spirited past, from rancorous school board elections to the issue of bilingual education.

In 1997, the parents of San Ysidro supported a $250 million bond issue Proposition C to fund school repair and renovation.

- We appealed to the voters of the community.

We told them, "We need your help.

The children deserve better than this."

We needed a two thirds majority to win, and we came through with an 87% majority vote.

We made history.

It was the first time that a bond of that size had been passed in California ever.

- [Narrator] One of the activists in the campaign is graduating senior Roberto Hernandez.

- That's pretty much a good demonstration of San Ysidro coming together.

We had parents, we had teachers, we had students, we had community leaders there, City Councilman Juan Vargas.

We had everybody out there.

- [Narrator] Roberto will be attending the University of California at Berkeley.

- Upon graduating from law school, my first responsibility is the community of San Ysidro.

Being that I have lived here all my life, I intend to come back and do what I believe would be good for improving the community.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Today, San Ysidro sits on the busiest border crossing in the world, hemmed in by trolley tracks, and dissected by freeways.

Still a small community, the close proximity to Mexico is a constant reminder of the important relationship between the two countries.

(lively music) San Ysidro Day is a yearly event where the community celebrates their history and their future.

- Days like this in any community provides for some real positive things.

It gives you a chance to be together, to celebrate things, to kind of celebrate the things you have in common, instead of things that may make you different from one another.

So for us, San Ysidro Day is something that we've come to really, really look forward to.

- It's a very fun place to live in, because there's like, a lot of kids around here, and activities that you can play in.

(Adelina speaking Spanish) (lively music) - It is a pleasure to be here today to celebrate Heritage Day here in San Ysidro.

(Juan speaking Spanish) (lively music) It really is an honor for me to be here and to say, you know, congratulations, San Ysidro, you've come a long way.

(lively music)