December 30, 1853
James Gadsden, the U.S. minister to Mexico, and General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the president of Mexico, signed the Gadsden Purchase in Mexico City. The treaty settled the dispute over the location of the Mexican border west of El Paso, Texas, and established the final boundaries of the southern United States. For the price of $15 million (later reduced to $10 million) the United States acquired approximately 30,000 square miles of land in what is now southern New Mexico and Arizona, lobbied for by a group of political and industrial leaders as a strategic location for the construction of the southern transcontinental railroad.
