Arizona’s Boundless Boundaries
By Marshall Trimble
Did you know Arizona was once a part of western Georgia? In 1733, King George II declared that Georgia extended west all the way to the Pacific Ocean. We almost became part of another grand plan in 1849, when Mormons proposed the State of Deseret, which included one-sixth of the contiguous United States and encompassed most of what today is Nevada and Arizona, a large portion of California, and several hundred miles of seacoast, including San Diego. Also planned for inclusion were all of Utah and parts of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Idaho. Congress turned down the proposition, but in the Compromise of 1850 did create the territories of Utah and New Mexico. For the next thirteen years, Arizona made up the western half of the New Mexico Territory.
Following the Mexican War, Arizona’s southern boundary was the Gila River. But the need for an all-weather transcontinental railroad along the Thirty-Second Parallel moved Congress to send James Gadsden to Mexico to secure a piece of real estate more suitable for a railroad. In 1854, the Gadsden Purchase created the final boundary lines of the contiguous United States.
The unique diagonal line on our southern border provides the inspiration for one of this state’s most enduring urban legends, albeit in this case, a desert one. The story goes that the surveyors were marking the line west on a course that would have taken them straight across to the Sea of Cortez, thus giving Arizona a seacoast. The boys reached Nogales, and spent the night in a Mexican cantina. The following day, realizing the next saloon was in Yuma, they decided to make a beeline in a northwesterly direction to the river port on the Colorado. And that’s why, they say, Arizona was deprived of a seacoast.
It’s a good story, but its all hogwash. Sometimes the truth isn’t nearly as much fun as the legend. First, Nogales didn’t even exist when the boundary was surveyed. More importantly, Mexico didn’t want to lose its land route to Baja California, and Northern congressmen didn’t want the South to acquire any more territory than would be just enough to build a transcontinental railroad.
There are also colorful stories about Arizona’s shifty northern, eastern, and western boundaries, but I’ll save them for another day.