The indigenous tribes who inhabited what is now commonly called the U.S. Southwestern Borderlands knew this land intimately, mapping and marking it with generation's of experience before contact with Europeans. Beginning in the sixteenth century, the Spanish and French began small settlements and created maps based on limited exploration and, at times, assumptions about the land and its features. It was not until the middle of the eighteenth century, as cartographers developed consistent processes to chart geographic space, that the area was thoroughly mapped and explored as part of the nation building efforts of the growing United States government.
In 1848, the Mexican American War concluded with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This agreement stipulated the creation of precise boundary lines between the United States and Mexico. Two teams of scientists led by Commissioners William H. Emory for the United States and José Salazar y Larregui for Mexico conducted complementary surveys. The resulting U.S.-Mexico boundary was a politically based line that sometimes ran straight through the center of existing borderland towns, communities and even buildings.
After the border was marked, residents of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands continued to skirmish over resources and rights. Additional surveys marking the boundary lines were conducted periodically and the IBCW, an intergovernmental commissions was tasked with overseeing any issues in U.S. and Mexican border locations and between its peoples. Even with this well-established process, the U.S.-Mexico border remains a site of dispute and conflict as shown by recent clashes over border crossings and a border wall.
William H. Emory led an historic six-year mapping and scientific expedition resulting in a three volume set of books titled The United States and Mexican Boundary Survey. Cartography was an intense, demanding endeavor in the nineteenth century. Emory’s team of engineers, astronomers, surveyors, computers (mathematicians who calculated the distances), botanists, and geologists spent several years in the field laying boundary markers, mapping and collecting botanical and zoological specimens.
The expedition expanded scientific and geographic knowledge about the entire region. The collected specimens were sent to Spencer F. Baird, a leading naturalist and curator at the fledgling Smithsonian Institute. Thousands of new species were discovered, and the majority of the three volumes is comprised of botanical and zoological descriptions accompanied by engravings. The books document the placement of border markers with detailed drawings and they include personal accounts of the country and people in the region. Original copies of the three volume set are held in UNM’s U.S. Federal Repository (Government Information Collection).
The image labeled "Boundary between the United States and Mexico, 1901" is from a very large atlas of indexed maps measuring 72 cm high by 104 cm wide roughly the size of a side table. The book was printed by the United States and Mexico to record a resurvey of the boundary lines between the two nations. After the border was set in 1857, settlement increased in the territory creating more pressure on residents' land and water rights. The U.S. and Mexican governments responded to these continuing issues in two ways. Between 1891 and 1894, teams of scientists from both countries joined together to rebuild boundary markers, resurvey the land between the two countries and create the indexed map featured in the exhibit. Mexico and the U.S. also established an organization called the International Boundary Commission (IBC) tasked with enforcing treaties between the two countries. This organization continues in this work today and now is known as the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBCW).
The atlas itself was again the result of extensive coordination and cooperation between U.S. and Mexican cartographers and officials. The boundary line between the U.S. and Mexico follows the centerline of the Rio Grande from the Gulf of Mexico to El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Chihauhua. From there it is delineated by a series of monuments and markers many of which had been removed or damaged and required repair since they were originally placed circa 1857.
