HISTORY2 - How Arizona Got its Shape

In my first group of history articles on this blog, I want to provide a flavor of my recent writing that I collected and self-published in three electronic books available for reading on my website, ringbrothershistory.com, under “Bob’s Projects.”  This article is adapted from Arizona Reflections - Living History from the Grand Canyon State.

On February 24, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln signed legislation dividing the New Mexico Territory into two approximately equal pieces, creating the Arizona Territory out of the western half.  But did you know that for years leading up to Lincoln’s action, most proposals to create a separate Arizona Territory wanted to do it out of New Mexico Territory’s southern half?

The Shape We Know Today

The story begins in 1845 when the United States annexed the Republic of Texas as a state.  At the time, Texas claimed lands to the west that included much of present day New Mexico. 

At the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848, Mexico ceded vast southwestern lands to the United States.  In 1850 The U.S. Congress established the New Mexico Territory - including parts of present-day Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado - and settled the eastern boundary of New Mexico at 103 degrees west longitude.  Congress also admitted California as a state, with its eastern boundary along the Colorado River, and created a new Utah Territory.

To secure land for a southern transcontinental railroad, the U.S. negotiated with Mexico for the Gadsden Purchase of 1854, adding the southern part of present-day Arizona and the southwestern part of present-day New Mexico (Mesilla Valley) to the New Mexico Territory.

The lower part of the New Mexico Territory was largely dominated by Anglos from Texas, with the upper portion largely under the control of a large Mexican population.  (Arizona was very sparsely populated compared to New Mexico.)  Settlers in the southern New Mexico Territory felt that they were discriminated against by the northern portion, and complained of a lack of representation in the territorial legislature and no protection from Indian raids. 

This situation led to meetings in 1856 in Mesilla and Tucson that produced a petition that the New Mexico Territory be divided into two territories by a boundary running east-west along the 34^th parallel.  By 1860 ten bills had been introduced into the U.S. Congress proposing a division of New Mexico Territory along an east-west line.  None of these bills succeeded because Congress was deeply involved in the North-South sectional controversy that led to the Civil War.

Just before the Civil War started, on February 28, 1861, Congress established a new Colorado Territory, removing the Colorado lands from northeast New Mexico Territory.

During the Civil War, on August 1, 1861, Lieutenant Colonel John R. Baylor of Texas took possession for the Confederacy of the “Territory of Arizona,” comprising all of New Mexico and Arizona south of the 34^th parallel.  President Jefferson Davis formally accepted Arizona into the Confederacy on January 14, 1862.  However, by July that year, Union troops had “retaken” the southern part of the New Mexico Territory.

The Confederate actions finally spurred the U.S. to act on a separate Arizona Territory.  But, the bill that passed Congress and that Abraham Lincoln signed on February 24, 1863, was for an Arizona Territory that was separated from New Mexico along a north-south line approximately at the 109^th meridian.  It was generally thought that southern Arizona and New Mexico favored the Confederacy, so a north-south line would break up this potentially hostile bloc.

In 1866 the U.S. Congress passed a bill allowing Nevada, two years after it became a state, to absorb the northwestern part of Arizona Territory, west of the Colorado River, because of perceptions that Nevada would be better able to oversee an anticipated population boom there due to discovery of gold.

The next almost half century was a nightmare for New Mexico and Arizona statehood aspirations.  Members of the U.S. Congress considered that there were too few people in the Southwestern desert, that the people were uneducated and poor, and were further bothered by the proportionally large numbers of Mexicans and Native Americans.

Finally things began to move in the early 1900s.  After considerable discussion of “jointure,” the idea of admitting New Mexico and Arizona to the Union as a single state, Congress finally passed legislation to admit the territories as separate states - with the now familiar boundaries.  President William Howard Taft signed New Mexico into statehood on January 6, 1912, and signed for Arizona on February 14, 1912, exactly 50 years after Arizona was admitted to the Confederacy.

                             You can follow the steps that were taken to establish Arizona and

 New Mexico and the border between them in this three-part map.  (Courtesy of Joan Pennington)

An Alternative Arizona

How would things be different today if Arizona had been fashioned out the southern half of the New Mexico Territory, as proposed many times in the 1850s and early 1860s?

First, let’s look at the map.  We’ll assume that the New Mexico Territory was split on an east-west line at the 34 parallel, as outlined in ten (unsuccessful) bills to the U.S. Congress.  Everything above 34N latitude belongs to New Mexico and everything south of 34N latitude belongs to Arizona. (Note: italics font designates the “fantasy” states.)

 If some legislators had succeeded, Arizona would have been formed from the

 southern half of New Mexico Territory, as shown in this map.

 (Map courtesy of Tom Bergin)                     

Arizona loses about 60% of its land area, mostly mountainous high country, including the Grand Canyon, Prescott, Flagstaff, the Four Corners region, and the Mogollon Rim country.  But, Arizona picks up about 40% of New Mexico’s land area, additional rugged southwestern desert, along with Silver City and the Gila Cliff Dwellings, Las Cruces, Alamogordo, White Sands National Monument, Roswell, and Carlsbad Caverns.  Familiar summer-escape towns to Tucsonans - like Payson and Pinetop - are now in New Mexico.

Arizona must revise its Spanish-conquest historical records to account for Spanish expeditions through southern New Mexico to establish mines around Socorro and the first Spanish settlements around Santa Fe in the late 1590s and early 1600s, decades prior to Father Kino making his first mission-building excursions northward into Arizona in the 1690s.  However, Tubac (1752) and Tucson (1775) retain “old(est) pueblo” honors in Arizona, because the earlier Spanish pueblos were established in New Mexico.

Economically, Arizona keeps its traditional strengths, the five “C’s,” cattle, copper, citrus, cotton, and climate, plus most of its cropland, while losing considerable lumber business and tourism from northern Arizona’s wonderlands.  Arizona gains southwestern New Mexico’s copper mining business (Chino open pit); considerable military business associated with Holloman AFB at Alamogordo and White Sands Missile (Test) Range, between Las Cruces and Alamogordo; and vast crude oil and natural gas production from the Permian Basin in southeastern New Mexico.  Arizona also picks up Roswell, a center for irrigation farming, dairying, ranching, manufacturing, distribution, and petroleum production; and tourism from southern New Mexico.

A sobering thought in today’s turbulent times is that Arizona’s border with Mexico increases about 50% in length, all the way to El Paso, Texas.  That’s a 50% increase in thorny border issues such as drug running and illegal immigration.

There’s good news and bad news for Arizona with respect to water.  The good news is that Arizona gains two mighty rivers that flow out of the mountains of Colorado (Rio Grande) and northern New Mexico (Pecos), eventually merging and continuing south to the Gulf of Mexico while irrigating an enormous watershed in south-central and eastern New Mexico.  Restricted by potential water rights issues with New Mexico and Texas (and notwithstanding severe droughts in recent years), these two rivers are a fantastic resource for Arizona.

The bad news is that Parker Dam built in the 1930s along the Colorado River to form a gigantic reservoir, (Lake Havasu) to supply water to Mexico and seven western states, including Arizona via the Central Arizona Project, now borders New Mexico, not Arizona.  We might ask ourselves if the years of political struggles and planning that finally resulted in CAP canal delivery of water to southern Arizona by the 1990s, would have succeeded - or would the city of Tucson, by then completely dependent on rapidly depleting ground water, be but a shrinking desert oasis today.

The final result for Arizona in this fantasy recreation of states is the acquisition of New Mexico’s commercial production of chili peppers along the so-called “Chile Trail,” extending across southern New Mexico and including Hatch, the “Chili Capital of the World.”  Arizonans may have to usurp New Mexico’s official eatery question, “Red or Green,” referring to the choice of red or green chilies that one gets with many local meals.