WHO WAS ANITA?
Anita Grosso, with an Italian father and Indian Pima mother, grew up in El Rosario where she met Heraclio Espinoza. Together, they would host travelers making their way through the Baja California peninsula, always offering them warm food, beverages, and gas so they could keep going. After a while, in the early ’30s, she opened a small restaurant so she could officially serve everyone who stopped by El Rosario.
Besides hosting travelers, Anita always had a very generous heart and supported families in need from El Rosario. She passed that spirit on to her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. It was the best legacy she could have left to the community of El Rosario.
mama espinoza & dirt bikes
Decades later, the same roads became part of the famous Baja 1000 and Baja 500. Anita, who was later called Mama Espinoza by the riders, kept serving travelers, riders, and teams, becoming the first official checkpoint of the course, where her passion for motorcycles and off-road was born.
If you are part of the motorcycling world, you already know the rest is history. The tradition continued with her daughter Rolly and her son-in-law, Oscar Hale Sr. Now, her grandchildren Angelica, Shelly, Oscar Jr., Ruben, and Vito are the ones who run the Mama Espinoza Restaurant.
LEGACY
The passion for dirtbikes has been part of the Hale/Espinoza family for many years now, and Anita’s Memorial Ride is simply a way to honor all the generations that brought us here. We cannot find a better way to celebrate them than with the amazing community that has grown around this, and what a better place to do it than Baja’s best singletrack trails.
All profits go to the needs of the Rosario community, just as Mama Espinoza would have wanted.
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