Fake History: A Seaport in Arizona
Posted: Monday, February 06, 2012
by Octavia Hansen
Octavia Hansen
Can anyone image how The West would have changed if Arizona had a seaport? For about two hundred years, everything had to either be carted east from the Mississippi or ships sailed the long way around the southern tip of South America and goods were hauled west from California. If Arizona would have had a southern seaport, the western part of the United States would have become busier than Chicago, and with no ice and snow, perhaps an American Riviera.
Arizona used to have a jagged line border following a river but much higher up than the present horizontal line. It was a territory for many years, application for Statehood required a certain population, some campaigning and then a vote. Because of the railroads, a company vying to be the first across the continent, there was a purchase of land and Arizona got its kink across the bottom. This southern route railroad never made it. History was later made at Promontory Point, Utah, by another transcontinental railroad. The historical photo shows this happy meeting of two facing train engines surrounded by hundreds of people, though curiously, all the Chinese workers were not allowed in this picture. Prejudice is nothing new.
So . . . think about this. The U.S.-Mexican War is at an end (1848) and the borders have been re-drawn. You're a wealthy Spanish/Mexican land owner way out west and your thousands of acres of cattle, farm and mining lands are still many miles south of the United States and the Arizona Territory. Then a few years later, in 1853, a railroad company wants to swing south and connect the US east coast with the west coast. Suddenly, your land is really close, uncomfortably close to the border and America is notorious for confiscating land when it suits them . . . Texas, parts of Mexico, anything west of the Mississippi. The west is uncharted at this time, surveyors will be there any day to set markers and establish the border and ownership any day now.
You have one chance. The surveyors have arrived from the east. Everything is new to them, the climate, the land and especially the people so right now everyone in the team is trusting they are welcome. You cannot kill these people. Even if everything could be hidden, eventually they will be missed and more will come. The American Indians found this out the hard way and never recovered. Also, cold blooded murder, even for family lands will have a massive retaliation, possibly another conflict and everything will be lost.
No, got to be devious. There's a one shot chance. The surveyors begin. With the sun and their dedicated instruments they begin with a horizontal line, a line that will cut through your most valuable land, probably all the way to the the Gulf of California, the body of water between the Baja Peninsula and the main part of Mexico. What can you do?
Half way into the survey, they come to Nogales, a friendly settlement on the edge of your land. What can you do? What else?! Throw a party, a fiesta, for these hard working Americans. New to the Mexican culture and trying to be hospitable, the men join the celebration. They have never seen anything like it, tasted anything like it, nor experienced anything like a party in the desert. Drinks flow like water, everybody toasts, great music, dancing and everybody drinks . . . a lot . . . all night.
Except you and your chosen team of professionals. These men are paid handsomely and then a bit extra to disappear after the deed is done. Once boundary lines are drawn, they will never be retracted. Once a boundary is established, it would take an act of Congress and perhaps another war to change it. So, it's late, everyone is asleep, and all the survey equipment was left in place . . . alone . . . unguarded . . . out in the desert, under a clear sky, ready for the morning's work. Very carefully, with compass in hand, everything in the camp is moved, turned . . . now another path lies before them. A very slight change of 22 degrees to the North North West will not be noticed until it is too late.
With the rising of the sun, the American survey team heads to their job, happy, hung over, tired, never to consider there was anything different about their camp or their equipment. After about one hundred miles and the noon day sun changing course for the late afternoon set, something is wrong. Very wrong. The sun is not in the same place it was yesterday and it's too big a change not to be noticed now. Frantically, readings are re-taken, angles retraced and everyone is talking.
The instruments were changed. And there was too much already established to go back and start again. Where would they start from? Their time was limited, they were to finish soon and another job was waiting. By a simple deception, thousands of acres of land would be lost to the United States.
Too late now. The line was drawn, at an angle, and it lead away from a shoreline, cattle land and mining rights of a still rich and powerful man in Mexico.
Ahhhh! Ain't it great that human nature can sometimes be so predictable? And the lessons for this are:
1. A man will find a way to protect his land and wealth -- and this time it only took a fiesta, not a war, to change a national border.
2. Men who have been cloistered away in a dull job can be counted on to let loose when unsupervised. Never underestimate the hospitality of a foreign land.
3. And Arizona will forever be the land-locked state as it was surveyed so many years ago.
You do know this is all speculation and a good story -- right?
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Right. Your fertile mind seems to have no restricting elements. I would love to do your horoscope just to find the locations points for all of your imagination, which is barely tied down like a circus tent. I praise you for your talent and effort.
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