In 1850, you could stand in Tucson and still be in Mexico. From 1848 to 1854, the Gila River was the international border between the United States and Mexico. Everything south of it, including Tucson, Yuma, Nogales, Bisbee, Douglas and the land where Tombstone would later sit, was still Mexican territory. That changed because the U.S. wanted a better southern route for a transcontinental railroad. In 1854, the United States paid Mexico $10 million for roughly 30,000 square miles in what became known as the Gadsden Purchase. That deal moved the border south and added a huge portion of modern southern Arizona. The part that gets overlooked is that the people already living there had no say in any of it. The new border cut directly through Indigenous homelands, including the Tohono O’odham Nation, whose people still live on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border today. So yes, Tucson was part of Mexico until 1854. #Arizona #ArizonaHistory #Tucson #GadsdenPurchase #DownInnaDesert