Tijuana River

Tijuana River
River
Dam on the Tijuana River in Mexico.
Countries	Mexico,  United States
States	Baja California, California
District	San Diego County (California)
Municipalities	Ensenada, Tijuana, Tecate, San Ysidro (Baja California)
Tributaries
- left	Arroyo de las Palmas
Source	Sierra de Juárez
- location	Municipality of Ensenada
- elevation	614 ft (187 m)
Mouth	Pacific Ocean
- location	Imperial Beach
- elevation	0 ft (0 m)
Length	120 mi (193 km)
Basin	1,750 sq mi (4,532 km2)
Discharge	for Nestor, San Diego
- average	42.5 cu ft/s (1 m3/s)
- max	33,500 cu ft/s (949 m3/s)
- min	0 cu ft/s (0 m3/s)

The Tijuana River (Spanish: Río Tijuana) is an intermittent river, 120 mi (195 km) long, near the Pacific coast of northern Baja California state in northwestern Mexico and Southern California in the western United States.

The Tijuana River drains an arid area along the U.S.—Mexico border, flowing through Mexico for most its course then crossing the border into Southern California for its lower 5 mi (8 km) to empty into the ocean in an estuary on the southern edge of San Diego.

The Tijuana River has two main tributaries. One the Arroyo de Alamar or Rio Alamar, runs in its upper reaches in the United States as Cottonwood Creek. It runs from its source in the Laguna Mountains southwestward where it is impounded in by two dams, Barrett and Morena, to supply water to the city of San Diego. Cottonwood Creek is joined by the Tecate Creek before it enters Mexico where it is known as the Arroyo de Alamar from the point where it enters Mexico to its confluence with the larger tributary, the Arroyo de las Palmas, that forms the headwaters of the Tijuana River within the city.

The Arroyo de las Palmas, main tributary of the Tijuana River, flows out of the mountains to the east into the reservoir behind the Abelardo L. Rodríguez Dam. Downstream from the Rodríguez Dam water flows through Tijuana in a concrete channel to the international border, there it continues west through the Tijuana River Valley for a distance of about nine miles to the estuary and then to the Pacific Ocean.