Yuma

We drove through Quartzsite on the way and stopped to see a bunch of the stuff that is coming up in the annual shindig. Business seemed to be picking up. But for now we needed to head on to Yuma so we could get our motorhome windshield replaced. We had a rock chip that started cracking and just kept getting longer. J/Kat was drying moisture off the inside windshield and we think it got too hot and started cracking. Glad we don’t have to pay for it. Not even a deductible. It’s a big windshield!

Yuma hasn’t changed much. Of course there are lot’s of snowbirds like us, and then there is the sun, sand, and vegetables. Yup! Vegetables! Who knew? Well, if you didn’t, there are miles of vegetable fields around Yuma. For those of you who went to school while they were still teaching history you may remember the Gadsden Purchase. For you younger folks, “pay attention”!

Those vegetables are growing in what is the western portion of the Gadsden Purchase. At the end of the war with Mexico in 1848 the U.S. Minister to Mexico, James Gadsden, wanted to see a transcontinental railroad built along the southern U.S. He negotiated a deal with Mexican President Santa Anna to buy a large part of Mexico that is now southern New Mexico and Arizona. It worked out to 53 cents an acre. The agreed upon price was $10 million but the U.S. Congress only approved $7 million and only $6 million arrived in Mexico City. But Santa Anna took the money and wasted it away angering the Mexican people and pretty much ending his career. There was some interest in buying a much larger piece of land but the Mexican people were too angered and it didn’t get anywhere. But a private army from California invaded Mexico laying claim to the land and declaring it the Republic of Sonora. That didn’t last. But the new Gadsden Purchase was made a part of the Territory of New Mexico. The locals being southern wanted it to be a new state which would have made it a “slave” state. That would have unbalanced the “slave state, “free state” issue at the time before the “Civil War” and congress couldn’t agree on how to divide the territory. In 1861 at the beginning of the “Civil War” the Confederate congress declared the western portion of the Territory of New Mexico to be the new Confederate Territory of Arizona, which included the western part of the Gadsden Purchase. Well we know the Confederates lost the war but in 1912 that portion of the Territory of New Mexico became the state of Arizona. OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT! (that's my disclaimer) Now I betcha’ didn’t know that Arizona was once confederate. Well! Now you do! And what does that have to do with vegetables you say? Well, maybe nothing. You would probably still be buying vegetables and some of them would still be from Mexico. But some of them would probably not be from Yuma because I think Yuma would still be part of the Mexican desert. Where they did build a railroad in what is now the United States!