Rosarito’s storied Cabalgata Fiesta de las Fronteras will return this October for its 37th edition, celebrating a centuries-old moment when the Californias were formally divided during the missionary era.

Organized by the local Historical Society with the support of the Club de Prensa, sponsors, and dozens of volunteers, the horseback procession is set for Sunday, October 5. The committee, led by Rosario Castillo Zeja, has also petitioned to have the event declared part of Baja California’s official cultural heritage.

The tradition traces back to 1989, when historian and longtime city chronicler Juvenal Arias Pérez, then president of the Club de Prensa, helped establish the first Cabalgata Fiesta de las Fronteras. Arias recalled how his father, Pedro Arias Guzmán, first introduced a historic document to the club—one that described the “Mojón de Palou,” a landmark tied to the 18th-century division of the Californias.

The roots of the festival reach further back, to August 19, 1773, when Franciscan priest Francisco Palou led Spanish soldiers and settlers on a horseback journey to mark the territorial boundary. Atop El Coronel, a coastal mountain near present-day Rosarito, Palou placed an alderwood cross, symbolically planting the line that would separate what became Alta California from Baja California.

“That document was presented at the Club de Prensa in 1989, and as president I asked that we give it proper recognition,” Arias said. “With the support of then-municipal delegate Hugo Eduardo Torres Chabert, and later through the work of historians like Mario Reyes Meléndez, we were able to confirm the site and bring the celebration to life.”

Since then, the Cabalgata Fiesta de las Fronteras has become one of Rosarito’s most emblematic events, drawing riders, families, and history enthusiasts who retrace the symbolic frontier on horseback, honoring a past that still shapes the identity of Baja California.