100 Years Ago a Flood Almost Wiped Tijuana Off the Map

Can it happen again?

By SanDiegoRed Staff2016-01-14T20:35:00+00:00

A very peculiar story in which a man allegedly caused intense rains and floods will be part of a lecture called "1916-2016. Centenario del diluvio que borró Tijuana" (1916-2016. Tijuana's 100 Year Anniversary of the Flood that Wiped It Off the Face of the Earth), this Thursday, January 14 at 6 pm, delivered by professor Flavio Ramos and historian José Gabriel Rivera Delgado, head of Tijuana's History Archive Center. The event will take place at Tijuana's Institute for Art and Culture (IMAC) audiovisual room in Downtown Tijuana.

This period of time in the city's history was very interesting and it involved a man who went by the name of Charles Hatfield, who took credit (or was accused) of creating a series of huge storm that almost completely destroyed the border town 100 years ago, according to Flavio Ramos.

"It's odd, but the locals actually hired this person after three years of drought and promised to pay him 10 thousand dollars in exchange for enough rain to fill the Morena dam reservoir. Believe it or not, it started raining, but it rained so much that it ended up destroying everything, even the old racetrack that was just 100 meters away from the San Diego border alongside a casino", said Ramos.

Photo: Tijuana's local government

Charles Hatfield, an American "rainmaker", didn't only made it rain, but it actually poured so much that it filled all of San Diego dams to a point where they started to overflow and then destroying the nearby areas.

"This event turned out to be catastrophic, he was asked to make the rain stop, with him replying, "No, I promised I would fill the Morena dam", and the dam was 13 feet short of being completely filled. So the rain didn't stop until the reservoir was filled, but it had already destroyed everything in its path, the city ended up not paying him the promised 10,000 fee since a formal agreement was never drawn up."

Tijuana later resurged after the 1916 flood, which can be seen on the following pictures from back in the day. These and more pictures will be explained in detail today at city's former town hall.

Gabriel Rivera, head of Tijuana's History Archive Center, stated that the city's historical archive preservation is very important, especially in anniversaries as important as this one, in an era where Tijuana's population was a mere thousand people.

"This needs to go down in the history books as an important border region event. 1916, 1937, 1969 and 1993 are eventful years that dealt with catastrophic events in the city, reason why this anniversary is so important", stressed Rivera Delgado.