The Gadsden Purchase

While reviewing the industrial sites that my employer monitors in Mexico a friend mentioned the Gadsden Purchase which I had not heard of before. Searching the web for information I found that in 1854, the United States purchased a strip of territory (approximately 30,000 square miles) from Mexico in what is now southwestern New Mexico and southern Arizona. The purchase price was $10 million, which at the time was greatly overpriced for what was essentially desert lands, because this price reflected the public sentiments at the time. Many Americans considered the price of the Gadsden Purchase as "conscience money" or additional compensation for the earlier purchase of vast tracts of land under the 1848 Guadalupe-Hidalgo Treaty (American-Mexicam War of 1848). This is interesting because the acquisition of land in this purchase defined the present boundaries of the continental United States.