Page 75 - Cooke's Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui

Chief Surveyor, so there could be no disagreement oncriticalissues. WhenEmoryreturnedtoFranklin on December 2, he found that there would be very few problems if any with the Mexican Commissioner because Santa Anna was so anxious to receive the remaining $3 million. The Americans were to make their own observations, and the Mexicans would
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check them later.
The payment of the last $3 million to Mexico,
agreed to in the Gadsden Treaty, was held up by United States legislators who thought the money should be used for the indemnification payments to Americans for losses incurred by the war. When General John Garland, acting on orders of New Mexico’s Governor William Meriwether, raised the United States flag over Mesilla on November 16, 1854, Mexico’s Juan Almonte demanded that Secretary of State William Learned Marcy approve the payment immediately.
The administration did not give his demands
serious attention, and Secretary of War Jefferson
Finis Davis considered the act “only a harmless
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ceremony.”
ment was withheld until after the boundary line was established. The survey fieldwork was completed on October 15, 1855, and the last payment made in February 1856, even though the official, ratified
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efforts to the Office of Explorations and Surveys, a
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newly created War Department agency.
Surveys were to be made along the 48th parallel, led by Issac Ingalls Stevens, Governor of the Oregon Territory, and along the 42nd parallel, led by E. G. Beckwith. Captain John Williams Gunnison would supervise a survey along the 38th parallel and First Lieutenant Amiel Weeks Whipple would lead an expeditionalongthe35thparallel. Thesouthern route along the 32nd parallel was divided among three groups led by First Lieutenant John Pope, Brevet Second Lieutenant John Grubb Parke, and Second Lieutenant George Stoneman (Figure 22). Simultaneously, a private survey for a southern route was funded by the Texas Western Railway Com- pany, under the direction of Andrew Belcher
Gray.68
Prior to any of these surveys, a Santa Fe trader,
Francois Xavier Aubry, had driven sheep west along the southern route and returned from California along the 35th parallel, arriving at Santa Fe by way of Albuquerque. He made his return this way specifically to assess the terrain for a possible rail- road route. In reporting his findings, he leaned definitely toward the more northern route because
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he saw it as “being more serviceable to the Union.” From a technical standpoint, he listed relatively equal advantages and problems for each.
Lieutenant Parke was in San Diego when his in- structions (issued on November 18) reached him on December 20, 1853. He was to explore from the Pima villages in Arizona to the Rio Grande using a party and equipment from the Whipple and Wil- liamson expeditions. When he got as far east as Cooke’s Wagon Road, he was to proceed to the Rio Grande by the best and shortest route and intersect the river somewhere between Dona Ana and Frontera, a few miles upriver from Franklin. Be- cause the Gadsden Purchase had not yet been set- tled, permission by Mexico to run a line through the northern part of that country was needed, and it had
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been granted.
Parke set out from San Diego on January 24, 1854,
with a group of 56 men of which exactly half were a
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Despite Mexican protests, the pay-
maps were not exchanged until June 25, 1856. acquisition added nearly 30,000 square miles to the United States and sealed the Cooke’s Peak area and the wagon road as integral parts of Manifest Destiny.
Surveys for the Pacific Railroad
Before the surveys to establish the new boundary under the terms of the Gadsden Treaty were com- plete, many people were agitating for a railroad to the west coast over the southern route. However, before yielding to sectional pressures, Congress sought to determine the best Pacific railroad route by means more scientific than men’s emotions. To accomplish this goal, Congress appropriated $150,000 for five surveys, with Secretary of War Jefferson Davis entrusted to carry out the details. Davis first went to Colonel John James Abert, Chief of the Topographical Engineers, for advice. How- ever, he then assigned the direction of the specific
The
Chapter 3
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The survey party passed through Tucson and reached the Mimbres River in March. On March 7, Parke sent a scouting party north to inspect Fort Webster (the old copper mine head- quarters facility) only to find it in ruins. The Apaches had sacked and burned the abandoned
military escort.