Mexicali has a history with the Jesuits........whose main University in the USA is Georgetown.........which is near the Potomac river in Wash DC.......

History[edit]

Early history[edit]

The Spaniards arrived to the area after crossing the Sonoran Desert's "Camino del Diablo" or Devil's Road. This led to the evangelization of the area by Catholic missionaries and also to the reduction of native populations in the region. Nowadays, indigenous Cocopah people still inhabit a small government-protected corner of the Colorado River delta near the junction of the Hardy and the Colorado. The Cocopah mostly work on agricultural ejidos or fishing.^[1]

The early European presence in this area was limited to Anza's and subsequent Spanish expeditions across the Colorado Desert and subsequent travelers on the Sonora Roadopened by them. Also the presence of the Jesuits who attempted to establish a mission in what is now Fort Yuma. They left after a revolt by the Yuma in 1781. After this, the Spanish had little to do with the northeastern corner of the Baja California Peninsula, perceiving it as an untamable, flood-prone desert delta.^[1] Later in the 1820s, the Mexican authorities reopened the Sonoran Road and restored peaceful relations with the Yuma People.^[2]

The Sonoran Road provided a route for American fur trappers, and later American troops of Kearny and Cooke passing through the area during the Mexican–American War. The annexation of most of Alta California soon was followed by the California Gold Rush that saw a flood of gold seekers from Mexico on the Sonora Road, especially from Sonora, and from the United States via the Southern Emigrant Trail. Herds of cattle and sheep were driven into California across this desert trail also.

This route became a U. S. Mail and stagecoach route in 1857 when the San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line and in 1858 Butterfield Overland Mail route passed along the Alamo and New Rivers and established stations there including its New River Station in the vicinity of a Laguna along the New River in what is now Colonia Hidalgo, Mexicali in 1858. This mail route remained in use until 1877 when the Southern Pacific Railroad came to Yuma making it obsolete.