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3 unusual facts about Gadsden Purchase


Gadsden Purchase

When the secession proposal failed, Gadsden, working with his cousin Isaac Edward Holmes, a lawyer in San Francisco since 1851, and the California state senator Thomas Jefferson Green, attempted to divide California in two.

Prominent attendees included John C. Calhoun, Clement C. Clay, Sr., John Bell, William Gwin, and Edmund P. Gaines, but it was James Gadsden of South Carolina who was influential in the convention’s recommending a southern route for the proposed railroad, beginning in Texas and ending in San Diego or Mazatlán.

International Boundary and Water Commission

The Gadsden Purchase Treaty of 30 December 1853 extended the southern boundary of New Mexico and Arizona southwards to enable the United States to construct a railroad to the west coast along a southern route and to resolve a question arising from the 1848 Treaty as to the location of the southern boundary of New Mexico.


Copper mining in Arizona

After the Gadsden Purchase brought the southern Arizona into the United States in 1853, the mine was reopened in 1855, and shipped high-grade ore to Swansea in Wales.

East Sahuarita, Arizona

After the Mexican War of Independence in 1821, the region came under Mexican control until they sold the land to the United States as part of the Gadsden Purchase.

Isaac Green Messec

In 1849, Messec joined in the California Gold Rush, leaving East Texas for California with a party of fifty men, he crossed the entire state of Texas, turned south at El Paso into Chihuahua, Mexico to avoid the Apache, crossed into Sonora by way of the Guadalupe Pass, followed the trail through the future Gadsden Purchase territory to the Gila River, and rode down the Gila to the Colorado River.


see also

Fort Buchanan

Fort Buchanan, Arizona, is a former United States Army base in Arizona to control land purchased in the Gadsden Purchase