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= Mapping of the U.S.–Mexico Border =

Overview
Shortly following the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848, The United States and Mexican governments created the Joint United States and Mexican Boundary Commission to begin demarcating the agreed upon boundary line in 1849. At first, what seemed to be a rather straightforward demarcation of the border in the eyes of the two governments, would turn into a seven year long ordeal with an assortment of setbacks including Indian raids, death, inadequate funding and equipment, and disagreements upon the boundary lines. The modern day border would not be fully demarcated until October 1855 following The Gadsden-Mesilla Treaty, and a final surveying expedition.

First Phase
Arriving in the Mexico City in May of 1849 the Joint United States and Mexico Boundary commission was charged with surveying, mapping, and demarcating the boundary line, the joint boundary commission actually had many more responsibilities, ranging from gathering information about flora and fauna to negotiating amicable relationships with Native people. Their mission was twofold—to impose state definitions on the ground and to map what was already there for the knowledge and future use of the state. For the first phase, the commission surveyed The Rio Grande from the Gulf of Mexico to the Mesilla Valley and the town of El Paso. The commission was poorly funded for the scale of the operation. The U.S. initially allocated only $50,000 dollars for the project, but that money was quickly used up and more was authorized. The Mexican commission lacked adequate tools, military escorts and, most importantly, funding. Although the Mexican government had ordered the best possible instruments from Paris, the tools that arrived in Mexico City were of inferior quality.

The U.S. side went through four different commissioners during this time.

Second Phase
In 1851, the boundary commission reconvened in El Paso with John Russell Bartlett as the U.S. commissioner and Garcia Conde as the Mexico commissioner. Conde was a Sonoran native and was familiar with the area. The second phase of the boundary survey began in much the same way as the first—with trouble figuring out where to start. Upon arriving in the field, the commission discovered that the Rio Grande was two degrees west and El Paso 34 miles south and 130 miles west of where the map used for the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo showed them .Conde and Bartlett compromised and drew the line from their initial point in the Rio Grande on the 32° 2’ line west to the Gila River. The commission worked in temperatures ranging from below freezing in the mountains to over 120 degrees in the desert. The steep and rocky terrain at times forced members of the commission to abandon their wagons and carry their supplies and tools by mule .The party was under constant threat of raids by Apaches but where able to safely stop and rest at Pima and Maricopa villages along the way.

Under Article XI of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the U.S. government had agreed to prevent all Indian raids from U.S. territory into Mexico and to return any Mexicans the Indians had captured .Bartlett negotiated a deal with Apaches for a young captured girl near the Santa Rita copper mines, but before leaving the site was raided of between 100 and 300 mules and horses. With this realization, he implicitly recognized who held the balance of power on the border. As the commission moved west, they suffered from additional raids, forcing members of the commission to pass through some of the harshest stretches of the border on foot.

Boundary Dispute and Gadsden Treaty
As the commission was wrapping up, controversy sparked when well know surveyor Andrew B. Gray publicly opposed Bartlett and Conde’s border saying that it did not follow the map in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and gave important land that could be used for a southern railroad to Mexico. Convinced by Gray’s argument that the compromise line left Mexico in control of the passable valleys a railroad would require, the U.S. Congress rejected Garcia Conde and Bartlett’s compromise line and brought the boundary survey to a halt.

James Gadsden was sent to Mexico to renegotiate the southern boundary with the recently returned Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Gadsden negotiated for Article XI to be stuck from the treaty.The Gadsden treaty was signed in 1853 and Mexico received $10 million dollars.

Final Survey
In December 1854, the final survey began and it experienced much of this same problems as the previous. However, despite these challenges and thanks in large part to the experience that the commissioners and surveyors now brought to the table, the commission completed its work in the field by October 1855.

Borderlands
The signing of The Gadsden Treaty had once again remade maps of the United States and Mexico, but it had done very little to reshape the landscape of power align the border. In the years following the completion of the boundary survey, the struggles for control of the borderlands would continue unabated along the boundary line. The demarcation of the boundary was a much tougher task that anyone could have anticipated. The harsh desert landscape and the constant Apache presence made it extremely difficult to survey and brought up the question of who actually controlled the borderland. While the United States and Mexico went through the grueling ordeal of mapping the border, it was clear that neither nation had any real power in the region during that time and the years that followed.