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Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

We have a couple of goals for our Gazetteer:

  • That it be a tool which helps us with planning our trips.
  • We're trying to shape our Gazetteer as a tool to help us understand the community in which our ancestors lived, the community that was part of their daily lives.
  • On our trips, we try to visit those places where our ancestors left their footprints.

By learning about Calexico (and the surrounding area) during the time that our ancestors lived, we hope to have a better understanding of both their community and its relationship to their lifes. We hope that this tool helps to give us an insight into their world.

As we add data and organize our Gazetteer to help with our family research, we will be adding to this our Genealogical Helper for Calexico. While we don't have information that is specific to any given person or family, we intend to expand our understanding about where and how people lived.

A Few Details for Calexico ...

While it's still very early in our research, we found that:

  • The naming (or the toponymy) of Calexico:

    • The name Calexico is a portmanteau<1> and it reflects the fact that the city lies just north of the border of California and Mexico. Calexico lies on the California side of the border while Mexicali, its sister city, is in Mexico.

  • Calexico was founded in 1899.
  • It was incorporated on April 16, 1908.

Neighboring Counties ...

When searching for family records, we have frequently made the mistake of not checking the neighboring counties.

For example, we have great-grandparents who lived in the southwest corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals and doctors were in the next county to the west. Almost all of the nearby churches and cemeteries were in the county to the south.

So when searching for records, we had our best success by looking in neighboring counties instead of the county in which they lived:  their home county contained property and probate records; the county to the west contained birth and death records; the county to the south contained their burial records. If we hadn't included the neighboring counties, we would have missed many valuable sources of information.

If you're in a similar situation, we hope that the following information helps.

Calexico is located in Imperial County.

To see how the shape of California's counties have changed over time, we recommend the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Imperial County: Yuma (AZ), Riverside & San Diego.

Below are the counties that are near Calexico. For each of these counties, we show a sample of those communities that are closest to Calexico:

  • Imperial County     (The home county of Calexico)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Calexico, with the one closest to Calexico listed first.
    • Heber
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northwest)
    • Watermans Corner
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the north)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Watermans Corner
      • Watermans Corner is located in Imperial County
    • El Centro
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the northwest)
    • Holtville
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the northeast)
    • Imperial
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the north)
    • Date City
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the northeast)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Date City
      • Date City is located in Imperial County
    • Seeley
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the northwest)
    • Alamorio
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the north)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Alamorio have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Alamorio
      • Alamorio is located in Imperial County
    • Brawley
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the north)
    • Plaster City
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the west)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Plaster City have been provided by the GNIS.<3> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Plaster City
      • Plaster City is located in Imperial County
    • Westmorland
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the north)
    • Ocotillo
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the west)

For an expanded list of the communities that are closest to Calexico, see our County-by-County Page for Calexico.

Newspapers Published in Calexico ...

An ongoing effort between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has resulted in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

To share their results, the partnership has created the Chronicling America website. The goal of this partnership is to assemble a database about the current and historic newspapers of the United States. This includes a growing collection of scanned images from selected papers. All of it available to the public on their website.

Using information that we've taken from the Chronicling America website, we've identified 38 newspapers that have been published in the area around Calexico.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Calexico, there are papers which were published within 30 miles [48.3 km]<4>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Calexico.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we start with the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch and Genealogy Trails. These helpful websites offer the information directly or else point to where you can find it. Their information is open to everyone.

To help you get started, the following links will take you to the pages that are relevant to Calexico:

Cemeteries Near Calexico ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Calexico.

This is a new section and is likely to have errors. If you find an error, such as a missing cemetery or we have the wrong name, please let us know. If you know of them, we would also appreciate learning about previous or alternate names.

If you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our selection of Genealogy Websites (see below).

If not found below, our Cemetery List for Calexico covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Calexico, with the one closest to Calexico listed first.

We've also created an expanded list of communities that existed in the 1890's and were located in the area around Calexico. See our List of 1890's Communities around Calexico.

The official website for Calexico: www.calexico.ca.gov/

The official website for Imperial County: www.co.imperial.ca.us/

The official website for State of California: https://www.ca.gov/

Footnotes ...

<1>A portmanteau (such as Calexico) is the combination or contraction of two (or more) words, their sound and the meaning of those words to create a new word. For example, camera and recorder becomes camcorder.
<2>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<3>The location has been supplied by the Geographic Names Information System - which is maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). While these values should be definitive, we found that accuracy can vary and you should double-check the location if accuracy is required.
<4>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Calexico) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Calexico. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 32.6791, Longitude: -115.4987    
<5>The Find-a-Grave website is an excellent research tool with information about a cemetery's location and interments. They also offer a forum for their members which can provide additional help. More information about Find-a-Grave can be found on their website: findagrave.com.




 

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This page was last modified/updated: 07 Apr 2024