Border Field Park
The inspiration for Border Field Blues happened many years ago, when my wife and I first stumbled on Border Field Park while out for a Sunday drive. It’s a rarely visited California state park along the San Diego-Tijuana border. It’s the most southwesterly corner of the continental United States. It was a rare combination of place – beautiful and forlorn. There was only a single rusty fence separating the border at that time, a flimsy chain link structure. Separated families met at the fence – passing food, money, and conversation through the rusted links. Beautiful and forlorn.
Anyway, I originally set the climactic action of my first Rolly Waters mystery, Black’s Beach Shuffle, here, but the location didn’t really fit the scope book, so I dropped it. I found a way to build the second book around the place, although the plot of Border Field Blues ended up a long ways from where I started.
Tijuana River Valley Regional Park is the larger area around the park, managed by the County of San Diego. Border Field Park is the California State Park within the regional park, and Friendship Park is the parking and people-friendly area at the top of Monument Mesa, across from the Tijuana bullring. It gets complicated. For fiction’s sake, I just referred to the whole area as Border Field Park.
