By the 1870s most of the western United States was well into a process of being "tamed." The transcontinental railway securely linked the West to the rest of the country in 1869 and a web of competing rail lines were being constructed to tie in all parts into a commercial whole. Still, some areas of the country were considered wild and untamed. These were mostly the areas where the Native American populations were desperately resisting the encrouching American settlements.

One of these areas was in Southern Arizona, encompassing what would become Cochise County. It was part of the last addition to the lower continental United States. In 1853, five years after the United States acquired most of the southwest as a result of the Mexican-American war, the government purchased an additional 45,535 square miles from Mexico for $10,000,000. The Gadsden purchase (named for the U.S. negotiator James Gadsden) comprised southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico (click above map to see outline).

Two decades later Cochise County still had few American inhabitants. Hostilities with the Apaches discouraged settlement. This would soon change however. The 1870s and 1880s were a period of great transition for Cochise County. During this time it would go from a landscape of Indians and outposts, to a territorial county with all of the trappings of settlement, industry and “civilization.” It provides a classic story of the development of the western frontier, full of mining booms and busts, lawless towns, railroad settlements, and Indian trouble.

Using evidence from maps produced during this period can help tell the story of a land in transition. They show the untamed and undefined areas as well as the growth in settlements, transportation, and industry. Throughout this essay, maps will be used to illustrate the changing landscape of Cochise County. They are maps redrawn from period maps to show the different layers of information.[1] When an illustrative map is available there will be a clickable map button in the text.

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Footnotes

1.Four general maps of Arizona were used in this analysis. The two main maps in this study were by the United States General Land Office, from 1876 and 1887. These were based on the most complete land surveys of the time and done specifically to aid in land distribution and settlement. Two other maps, done by the commerical publishers Rand, McNally and Company in 1876 and George F. Cram in 1887 are used in this study as a contrast to the government sponsored maps. All four maps are available online from the Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/gmdhome.html.