By Al Bates

This article is one of a series that will appear in this space during this year on historic events relating to the Arizona Territory’s Sesquicentennial and the founding and establishment of Prescott as the Territory’s first capital.

When most of what is now Arizona came into the United States following the Mexican War, the area above the Gila River was an isolated, unsettled western outpost of New Mexico Territory with no separate identity and of little perceived value.  It was only after the Gadsden Purchase of land below the Gila River that the idea of a separate political entity named Arizona emerged.

In 1853 the new American president, Franklin Pierce, dispatched James Gadsden, a southern railroad man, to Mexico as United States Minister with instructions to settle all issues left over from the Mexican War.  However, Gadsden’s most essential mission was to obtain sufficient land for the building of a transcontinental railroad on a route below the Gila River.

The ceding of Baja California to the US was quickly off the table and the Mexican government held firm to the position that their territory must continue to include a land route to Baja.  This removed any possibility for an American port at the Gulf of California, but had no impact on the goal of providing for the southern railroad route.  A draft signed on December 30, 1853, by Gadsden and the Mexican negotiators was submitted to the
U. S. Congress for ratification; but the negotiations were not yet over.

The final boundary line evolved as it did to fill two desires.  The stepped section to the east was intended to bring the heavily used Gila Trail within the US and the diagonal section to the west was in response to Mexico’s request that the border be far enough above the Colorado River delta for the building of a bridge linking Baja California to Mexico.

The purchase became effective at the end of June 1854, although it took almost two years for the boundary to be surveyed and marked and for the United States Army to take formal possession.

The Gadsden Purchase was not universally applauded.  One California newspaper correspondent wrote that it was “a barren, deserted, dreary waste—a desert—useful only as a dwelling place for the coyote, the owl, the rattle-snake, and the prairie dog.”

But when American settlers began arriving in the Gadsden Purchase they found more than an inhospitable waste populated by cactus and lethal critters.  They found opportunities in mining, farming and ranching.  This despite the growing menace of the Apache tribes and the activities of a lawless element that was enabled by a lack of law enforcement.

In the words of one early settler, they had “no laws for our guidance, no courts, [and] no officers to preserve the peace.”  American settlers in the Gadsden Purchase—including those former Mexican citizens who chose to become Americans—began clamoring for the establishment of a separate territory, with its capital located at either Tucson or Mesilla.

The first important use of the name “Arizona” was in an 1856 memorial to Congress advocating a separate government for the Gadsden Purchase to be named Arizona Territory.  This was only the first of several attempts to urge the process along, including at one point creating a provisional government with a full slate of territorial officers.

Then in 1861 the “Arizonans” rejected the United States and tried to attach themselves to the newly formed Confederate States of America, and on February 14, 1862, the Rebel government in Virginia recognized Arizona as a Confederate Territory using a horizontal split of New Mexico Territory for the dividing line.

That did not last for long, for once the few Confederate soldiers in “Arizona” were flushed out by the “Column from California,” General James Carleton declared himself military governor of Arizona Territory using a boundary definition still being considered by Congress.

Congress had been considering the creation of an Arizona Territory since 1856, considering a variety of configurations for the new territory.  Finally, they came to an agreement, and on February 24, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Organic Act that split Arizona from New Mexico along the now familiar vertical line—leaving the Mesilla Valley behind.

The stage now was set for something unanticipated that would enable the creation of a brand-new outpost in the new territory’s central mountain wilderness and cause a drastic change in the early history of Arizona Territory—the discovery of gold on the Hassayampa River.

Days Past is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners, International (www.prescottcorral.org). The public is encouraged to submit articles for consideration.  Please contact SHM Library & Archives reference desk at 928-445-3122 Ext. 14, or via email at dayspastprescott@gmail.com for information.