acres) of valley were irrigated, with 10,000 people settled on the land harvesting cotton, fruits, and vegetables. The concentration of small housing units that straddled the border was called Calexico on the U.S. side, Mexicali on the Mexican side.
The Mexican side was named Mexicali (a portmanteau composed of "Mexico" and "California") by Coronel Agustín Sanginéz. Initially the area belonged to the municipality of Ensenada. The town of Mexicali was officially created on 14 March 1903 when Manuel Vizcarra was named as the town's first authority and assistant judge (juez auxiliar). Mayor Baltazar Aviléz declared the municipality of Mexicali on November 4, 1914 and called for elections to create the first ayuntamiento or district council, which was then headed by Francisco L. Montejano.
Another U.S. land development company set out to do the same with the nearby Valley of Mexicali. Led by Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler, the company controlled 800,000 hectares of land in northern Baja California by 1905 and began to construct the irrigation system for this valley. However, instead of using Mexican labor to dig the ditches, Chandler brought in thousands of Chinese laborers. Mexicali became culturally more Chinese than Mexican.
In the 20th century, the Colorado Riverland Company was dedicated to renting land here to farmers; however, these farmers were almost always foreigners, such as Chinese, East Indians and Japanese. The Mexicans were employed only as seasonal labor. This situation led to the agrarian conflict known as the "Asalto a las Tierras" (Assault on the Lands) in 1937.
Agricultural production continued to increase during the 20th century. Cotton became the most important crop and with it developed the textile industry. In the early 1950s, the Mexicali Valley became the biggest cotton-producing zone in the whole country and in the 1960s, production reached more than half a million parcels a year. Currently, the
