Gadsden purchase

An agreement made in 1853 to buy a strip of land in what is now currently the southern United States so that a railroad line could be built to the Gulf of California. James Gadsden was a U.S. diplomat and soldier and the man who made the purchase. This was only five years after the end of the Mexican War and the delivery of the Mexican Cession. He agreed to pay Mexico $10 million for 45,535 square miles of territory that was almost as big as present day Pennsylvania.

The black line is the railroad completed with the Gadsden purchase