Tijuana is itself a creation of the border. The borderline was drawn here in 1848, as the United States completed its conquest of the present-day American Southwest. The border, along with the growth of San Diego and Los Angeles, gave Tijuana a reason to be.
Border security is ever-present here. The city has grown so close to the rusted U.S. border fence that it practically leans on it. The fence even cuts across the middle of Friendship Park, a circular plot of land that was laid out on the actual borderline as a symbol of the two nations' warm relations.