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The Country Club Area is a suburb of El Paso, Texas. It was the object of a lengthy border dispute between Texas and New Mexico.
As part of the Compromise of 1850, Texas gave up its claim to portions of present-day New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma in exchange for $10,000,000, and New Mexico became a territory. The pertinent boundary of Texas was set in 1850 where the Rio Grande intersects the 32nd parallel. A line from that point along the 32nd parallel to the 103rd meridian defined the southern border of New Mexico.
After the Gadsden Purchase in 1853, Congress passed the Act of 1854 declaring the southern boundary of the Territory of New Mexico. This basically gave all Gadsden Purchase lands to New Mexico (which then included what is now Arizona), thereby creating a 12-mile-long Rio Grande boundary between the State of Texas and New Mexico Territory.
Sometime between 1850 and 1912, when New Mexico gained statehood, the Rio Grande shifted course. How much it shifted, where, and in which direction were the central issues in dispute, as both sides agreed that the Rio Grande, as it existed in 1850, was the true boundary. By 1912, the de facto western boundary of Texas was well beyond the Rio Grande in most places. Deeds for lands over a half-mile west of the Rio Grande were filed in Texas, taxes for these lands were paid in Texas, and the residents voted in Texas.
The stakes of the dispute were more than trivial to these two vast states because of the value of the lands involved. As part of the Chihuahua Desert, lands in proximity to the Rio Grande were substantially more lush and fertile, and hence more valuable than similar sized tracts elsewhere in the region. In addition to productive farms, valuable homes and a country club were built in the vicinity (though not necessarily on the disputed land), hence the name of the dispute (El Paso Country Club is located at 31°50′05″N106°35′22″W / 31.83472°N 106.58944°W ).
In 1913, New Mexico filed suit against Texas in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court appointed a special master to make findings of fact on the disputed issues in the case. The Court heard oral arguments by both states in State of New Mexico v. State of Texas in 1927, and announced its verdict later that year. Essentially, the Court sided with Texas with respect to most facts in the case and in its final verdict. They also implied that New Mexico had no standing to dispute any changes to its borders made before it gained statehood in 1912; those boundaries were an issue between Texas and the U.S. Federal Government.
Today, this remains the only major area where Texas extends beyond the Rio Grande. [1]
The Rio Grande, known in Mexico as the Río Bravo del Norte or simply the Río Bravo, is one of the principal rivers in the southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The length of the Rio Grande is 1,896 miles (3,051 km). It originates in south-central Colorado, in the United States, and flows to the Gulf of Mexico. The Rio Grande drainage basin (watershed) has an area of 182,200 square miles (472,000 km2); however, the endorheic basins that are adjacent to and within the greater drainage basin of the Rio Grande increase the total drainage-basin area to 336,000 square miles (870,000 km2).
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that defused a political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired in the Mexican–American War. It also set Texas's western and northern borders and included provisions addressing fugitive slaves and the slave trade. The compromise was brokered by Whig senator Henry Clay and Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas, with the support of President Millard Fillmore.
Santa Fe de Nuevo México was a Kingdom of the Spanish Empire and New Spain, and later a territory of independent Mexico. The first capital was San Juan de los Caballeros from 1598 until 1610, and from 1610 onward the capital was La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís.
The Gadsden Purchase is a 29,670-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.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, officially titled the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits and Settlement between the United States of America and the Mexican Republic, is the peace treaty that was signed on 2 February 1848, in the Villa de Guadalupe Hidalgo between the United States and Mexico that ended the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). The treaty was ratified by the United States on 10 March and by Mexico on 19 May. The ratifications were exchanged on 30 May, and the treaty was proclaimed on 4 July 1848.
The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that generally includes Arizona, New Mexico, and adjacent portions of California, Colorado, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah. The largest cities by metropolitan area are Phoenix, Las Vegas, El Paso, Albuquerque, and Tucson. Prior to 1848, in the historical region of Santa Fe de Nuevo México as well as parts of Alta California and Coahuila y Tejas, settlement was almost non-existent outside of Nuevo México's Pueblos and Spanish or Mexican municipalities. Much of the area had been a part of New Spain and Mexico until the United States acquired the area through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and the smaller Gadsden Purchase in 1854.
James Gadsden was an American diplomat, soldier and businessman after whom the Gadsden Purchase is named, pertaining to land which the United States bought from Mexico, and which became the southern portions of Arizona and New Mexico. James Gadsden served as Adjutant General of the U.S. Army from August 13, 1821 – March 22, 1822. Between 1853 and 1856, he served as U.S. Minister to Mexico. He was known commonly as General Gadsden, although he never had a rank above Colonel.
The Territory of New Mexico was an organized incorporated territory of the United States from September 9, 1850, until January 6, 1912. It was created from the U.S. provisional government of New Mexico, as a result of Nuevo México becoming part of the American frontier after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. It existed with varying boundaries until the territory was admitted to the Union as the U.S. state of New Mexico. This jurisdiction was an organized, incorporated territory of the US for nearly 62 years, the longest period of any territory in the contiguous United States.
The Mexican Cession is the region in the modern-day southwestern United States that Mexico ceded to the U.S. in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 after the Mexican–American War. This region had not been part of the areas east of the Rio Grande that had been claimed by the Republic of Texas, though the Texas annexation resolution two years earlier had not specified the southern and western boundary of the new state of Texas. At roughly 529,000 square miles (1,370,000 km2), the Mexican Cession was the third-largest acquisition of territory in U.S. history, surpassed only by the 827,000-square-mile (2,140,000 km2) Louisiana Purchase and the 586,000-square-mile (1,520,000 km2) Alaska Purchase.
The State of Deseret was a provisional state of the United States, proposed in 1849 by settlers from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. The provisional state existed for slightly over two years and was never recognized by the United States government. The name derives from the word for "honeybee" in the Book of Mormon.
The Chamizal dispute was a border conflict over about 600 acres (2.4 km2) on the Mexico–United States border between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. It was caused by a shift in the Rio Grande, as a survey presented in 1852 marked differences between the bed of the Rio Grande and the present channel of the river. Tensions over the territory during the historic Taft–Diaz summit almost resulted in the attempted assassination of both presidents on October 16, 1909.
The International Boundary and Water Commission is an international body created by the United States and Mexico in 1889 to apply the rules for determining the location of their international boundary when meandering rivers transferred tracts of land from one bank to the other, as established under the Convention of November 12, 1884.
The Rio Grande has changed course several times in recorded history, leading to a number of border disputes and uncertainties, both international and between individual U.S. states:
The Mexico–United States border is an international border separating Mexico and the United States, extending from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Gulf of Mexico in the east. The border traverses a variety of terrains, ranging from urban areas to deserts. The Mexico–United States border is the most frequently crossed border in the world, with approximately 350 million documented crossings annually. It is the tenth-longest border between two countries in the world.
New Mexico v. Texas, 275 U.S. 279 (1927), was a United States Supreme Court case that determined the boundary between Texas and New Mexico in the vicinity of El Paso, Texas.
Andrew Belcher Gray was an American surveyor.
The area currently occupied by the U.S. State of New Mexico has undergone numerous changes in occupancy and territorial claims and designations. This geographic chronology traces the territorial evolution of New Mexico.
Founded as El Paso del Norte by Spanish Franciscan friars at an important mountain pass, the area became a small agricultural producer though most settlement was south of the river where modern Mexico lies. The city was considered part of New Mexico under Spanish Conquerors and was tied economically to Santa Fe, New Mexico and the Chihuahuan mining districts of San Felipe El Real and San José del Parral.
In 1845, the Republic of Texas was annexed to the United States of America, becoming the 28th U.S. state. Border disputes between the new state and Mexico, which had never recognized Texas independence and still considered the area a renegade Mexican state, led to the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). When the war concluded, Mexico relinquished its claim on Texas, as well as other regions in what is now the southwestern United States. Texas' annexation as a state that tolerated slavery had caused tension in the United States among slave states and those that did not allow slavery. The tension was partially defused with the Compromise of 1850, in which Texas ceded some of its territory to the federal government to become non-slave-owning areas but gained El Paso.