Tecate

History

The Kumiai people have lived in this valley since prehistoric times, and their descendants still live in nearby communities such as San Antonio Necua and Juntas de Nejí. Mount Cuchumá was a place of refuge, hunting and ceremony for them. Nobody knows for certain what the word Tecate means, though it appears in the records of the San Diego mission from the early 1800s.

In 1829 the valley was granted as Rancho Tecate to Juan Bandini, who abandoned it after a Kumiai raid in 1836. In 1861 a decree by President Benito Juárez created the agricultural colony of Tecate. Farmers and ranchers arrived in the late 19th century, drawn by good water and soil, and planted olives, grapes and grain. The town celebrates April 2, 1888 as its official founding date.

The railway reached Tecate in 1915, linking it with Tijuana and Mexicali. In 1919 Governor Esteban Cantú had the engineer Luis Pavón draw the first town plan, 21 blocks set against the border, with the plaza and public buildings at the center. The Tecate brewery opened in 1943 and was sold to Monterrey's Cuauhtémoc group in 1954. Tecate became a municipality in its own right in 1953 and a Pueblo Mágico in 2012.