In
Mexico City on
December 30 James Gadsden, U.S.
Minister to Mexico, and General Antonio López de Santa Anna, President of Mexico, signed the Gadsden Purchase
. In 1853 the treaty settled the dispute over the exact location of the Mexican border west of
El Paso, Texas, giving the U.S. claim to approximately 29,000 square miles of land in what is now southern
New Mexico and
Arizona, for the price of $10,000,000.
U.S. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis had sent Gadsden to negotiate with Santa Anna for this tract of land which many people, including Davis, believed to be strategic for the construction of the southern transcontinental railroad. Many supporters of a southern Pacific railroad route came to believe that a transcontinental route which stretched through the Gadsden Purchase territory would greatly advantage southern states should hostilities break out with the north.
The first transcontinental railroad was, however, constructed along a more northerly route by the "big four" of western railroad construction--Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker. A southern transcontinental route through territory acquired by the Gadsen Purchase was not a reality until 1881 when the tracks of the "big four's" Southern Pacific met those of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe in the Territory of New Mexico.
Search the Today in History Archive on the terms Santa Anna and Jefferson Davis to learn more about two of the principals involved in the Gadsden Purchase.
Read accounts of the history of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Search on Southern Pacific and transcontinental railroad in California As I saw It: First-Person Narratives, 1849-1900, selecting "Search the full text of the collection."
Search across the American Memory pictorial collections on Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona, or railroad for more images.
Search the Today in History Archive on Arizona or New Mexico for more information on the history of each of these states. Read, for example, about the Arizona Territory.
Hispano Music and Culture of the Northern Rio Grande documents the religious and secular music of Spanish-speaking residents of rural Northern New Mexico (and Southern Colorado). Until about twenty-five years after the Gadsden Purchase, the area's remoteness contributed to a chronic shortage of clergy, a vacuum filled by extraordinary Hispanic religious and ceremonial music: alabados (hymns), folk drama, wedding songs, and dance tunes like the "Varsoviana (Varceliana)."
Search on the term Jefferson Davis and railroad in the Transportation and Communication section of Map Collections (1500-Present) to see a number of maps which were ordered by the Secretary of War. See, for example, a Map of the Territory of the United States from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean signed by Millard Fillmore. These maps accompanied reports of explorations for a transcontinental railroad route. Also search on New Mexico or Arizona in Map Collections: 1500-2002 for additional representations of the topography of the southwest United States. 
