The 19th century was a complex era for the United States, rife with both destruction and construction. By the turn of the 20th century, the country was unrecognizable from its beginnings; it had more than tripled in area, endured four major wars, outlawed slavery, and increased its population fifteen-fold. (1)
Creosote wood preservative played a pivotal role in this growth and, surprisingly, in the expansion of the country’s Southwest border. The first patents for creosote’s development and application were filed in the 1830s, and by the close of the century the country was dotted with creosote treatment facilities to produce the millions of wooden crossties needed for the nation’s skyrocketing railroad infrastructure.
Mexican-American War Aftermath: Expansion to the Pacific
A little-known inflection point which drove American economic development towards its eventual Industrial Revolution came right in the middle of the century. In 1848, politics and economics quite literally intersected with one another at the banks of the Gila River, northwest of the country’s new border town of El Paso, Texas.
The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo had ended the Mexican-American war, with the United States paying $15 million for 525,000 square miles of land that stretched to the Pacific Ocean, fulfilling what many believed was the country’s “manifest destiny”. Nine new states entered the union and the new southern border would now follow the Gila River to the west and the Rio Grande River to the southeast, along the western edge of Texas.
Oops – We Missed 30,000 Square Miles
But American diplomats should have consulted with the country’s business leaders first. In 1845, just three years before the outbreak of the war with Mexico, president of the South Carolina Railroad company James Gadsden held a “commercial convention” with southern leaders in Memphis, including John Calhoun, Clement Clay, and John Bell, to discuss the need for a transcontinental railroad in the South.
As a result, Gadsden identified a path through the Organ mountains northwest of El Paso, as a strategically important tract of level, fertile land on which to cite a westward-running railroad that would connect Charleston, South Carolina, to Texas and terminate at either San Diego, California, or Mazatlan, Mexico. This southern transcontinental railroad would unite the south with western lands, increase trade with Pacific ports, and enable the American South to compete with the North.
In a crushing blow to these business plans, this passage through the Organ mountains, including the fertile Mesilla Valley of the Rio Grande River, was ceded to Mexico in the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. Gadsden implored President Franklin Pierce to send him to renegotiate the southern border, adding that it would also resolve ongoing border skirmishes with Comanche and Apache tribes. Pierce agreed, appointing Gadsden in May, 1853, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Mexico and sending him to Mexico City to renegotiate the border region.
Asking one’s former enemy to return to the table only five years after concluding a war with them is not the best negotiating position. Narrowly cutting out the land most critical to developing a southern railroad had been a critical oversight by the US—for which it would pay.
While the United States had spent a mere $28 per square mile on land that generated nine additional states, the Gadsden Purchase, as it was called, was 11 times as expensive. For the small strip of land south of the Gila River, the US paid a whopping $333 per square mile. This 29,640-square-mile border region in present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico cost $10 million, two thirds the cost of the entire American West upon the conclusion of the Mexican-American War. The purchase took effect June 8, 1854 through the Treaty of Mesilla.
Plans Fulfilled: Southwestern Rail Expansion
Although the North managed to create a transcontinental route first—Union Pacific’s Overland Route connecting San Francisco to the existing eastern rail network in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1869—the Southern Pacific route followed in short order and was built from 1877 to 1881.
Demand for creosote-treated ties, which would keep their integrity for decades even in extremely dry and hot environments like the Southwest, skyrocketed. In 1870 only 45,000 miles of track had been laid since the arrival of the first locomotives to the US in the 1820s; by 1900 that number had more than tripled to 170,000 miles. Creosote-treatment plants cropped up across the country starting in Mississippi in 1875.
Franklin Pierce showed leadership when he approved such an expensive purchase. Perhaps his personal experience at the hands of the country’s young railroad network influenced him. He was a regular user of the country’s earliest trains between Massachusetts and his family home in New Hampshire.
However, when his only surviving child was killed in a derailment shortly after his election, he saw first-hand how much work the country still needed to do for trains to deliver on their promises to grow the economy, connect people, and start new communities. He bet that railroads would create a future America that was so prosperous its citizens would never look back and think $333 per square mile for the bottom strip of New Mexico and Arizona was too expensive. Indeed he would be right.
This article originally appeared in the September/October 2025 issue of the Railway Tie Association’s Crossties Magazine.
Notes
1. 1800 census: 5.3 million, 1900 census: 76.2 million. United States Population Chart. SUNY New York, OER Services, OS Collection. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-ushistory2os2xmaster/chapter/united-states-population-chart/