The Gadsden Purchase is a 29,640-square-mile (76,800 km2) region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico that the United States acquired from Mexico by the Treaty of Mesilla, which took effect on June 8, 1854. The purchase included lands south of the Gila River and west of the Rio Grande where the U.S. wanted to build a transcontinental railroad along a deep southern route, which the Southern Pacific Railroad later completed in 1881–1883. The purchase also aimed to resolve other border issues.
Lieutenant James Gadsden, U.S. Army, later American ambassador/ minister to Mexico
U.S. Secretary of State James Buchanan (1791–1868), who later became 15th President of the United States (1857–1861)
Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico
The Gadsden Purchase historical marker near Interstate 10
Arizona is a landlocked state in the Southwestern region of the United States. Arizona is part of the Four Corners region with Utah to the north, Colorado to the northeast, and New Mexico to the east; its other neighboring states are Nevada to the northwest, California to the west and the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California to the south and southwest. It is the 6th-largest and the 14th-most-populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix.
La conquista del Colorado, by Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau, depicts Francisco Vázquez de Coronado's 1540–1542 expedition. García López de Cárdenas can be seen overlooking the Grand Canyon.
Geronimo (far right) and his Apache warriors fought against both Mexican and American settlers.
Children of Depression-era migrant workers, Pinal County, 1937
The Grand Canyon
