San Ysidro, CA my first look at the MEX border

Found these pictures on the internet. Thank you to who's ever they are. The first pic is of the US/Mex border from the Mex side in 1925. The pic below is present day, from the Mex side but appears to be from the opposite direction. It went from 4 lanes to 24 lanes. eeeshhhh, talk about a parking lot ?!

I told you in an earlier post about going to the San Diego Courthouse and researching the deeds and finding the location of his parents property. We also got a photo copy of a plat map with lot sizes etc on it. From that and with the existance of a few roads that still exist, I was able to determine a pretty close proximinty where the house was. The Google Earth image below marks the spot. In 1959 Ansel's mother sold the property to Vivian and Maurice, (Ansel's older sister). Don't know the year, but at some point after that the property was purchased to widen I-5 and the approaches to the border.

The yellow line is the US/Mexican border. To the north of the border (US side) there is a very large factory outlet store complex. Front St is now an alley behind a strip mall. It doesn't exist on the GPS, but it was still here on Google Earth for now any way. On the death certificates, Mother Marshall's listed the address as 241 National, and on Papa's it was listed as Front and Louisiana. On the plat map the south boundary was Front St, the west boundary was National, and the east boundary was Louisiana. On a larger image of Google Earth we can see traces of National and Louisiana on the north side of I-5 and you can see where they tied into Front St. Ansel remembers that there wasn't anything between there property and the Mexican border except a simple barb wire fence.

Here we are parked on what is left of Front St., which is now an alley facing east. One hundred feet NE of the utility pole you see is where the house would be.



The Border behind the shopping complex. It's actually a triple fence. One fence is below the pickup, and has barbed wire on top of it. Then the fence on the other side of the pick up is two fences. There is a series of mega flood lights along the fence too.

As soon as I got out of my car and started to take pictures... these two officers showed up on bicycles to see what I was doing. I asked if I could take their pictures and they said no...

This picture is looking at Mexico on the other side of the fence, there is a very majestic flag blowing in the breeze.

And for my girlfriends who do their nails... this looked pretty cheap?

Bay Shore Park, Chula Vista

Our accomodations in Chula Vista were very nice for $50.00 a night. I was shocked at the price, that included taxes too. They had a common continental breakfast, anad a very nice hot tub which I used every night. Didn't have it in me to try the pool though.

Early every morning I would walk the 1.5 miles down to the Bay Shore Park and out the other side and make a loop back to the room, it would end up being at least 3 miles. My walk took me down past the a Marina Dry Dock business, which is in the left side of the pic, the vacant land in this picture is part of a wildlife sancuary between the hotel and the bay.

The waters there are sooooo blue, the colors are vibrant. The land in the back is Coronado. I was hoping to take a drive across it before we left, but didn't end up with enough time. The pic below is my attempt at a picture with the self timer on my camera sitting on top of a trash receptical.

Ansel and I each have Nextel Direct Connect (cell phone technology walkie talkies) and he can call me anytime there is a cell signal, which I check often. If there is no cell signal I can change them to Direct Talk which gives us a 1-2 mile radius. While his hearing is still a challenge, we have a system of him asking yes and no questions so he can disern my answers. Also if he just chirps, me and doesn't talk, then I check on him. It's our answer to "life alert", which only works with in 100' of your home phone. I also carried the little can of mace with me. It was a very nice area, a snow bird RV park provided lots of walkers in the same area.

Back to Glen Abbey Memorial Park

These palms in the park were exceptionally beautiful. They are surrounding a beautiful water feature. I told you in a earlier post that we had found Ansel's parents graves had been unmarked for 60 years. Ansel was visiting the Memorial Park for the first time, at the time of both of their deaths, the weather and the roads were really bad and he couldn't make the trip down from Burns, OR. After visiting with the park staff, they told us that they would put some temporary markers on the graves, and gave us information on purchasing stones. Ansel wanted to think about the purchase some. The last morning we were in San Diego we went by to see the markers.

Ansel, 94 years old, leaning on his cane (which he just started to use at Christmas time) reflecting on his parents, while looking at their final resting place in the Glen Abbey Memorial Park, Chula Vista, CA.

One more piece of Ansel's facinating life story is put together. It had troubled him that he couldn't remember when his Dad had died or where he was buried.