Western Heritage

Western Heritage is the only film I know where the Gadsden Purchase figures into the plot of the film. The idea here is that villain Harry Woods {there's a redundancy} has got himself possession of a Spanish land grant in the Gadsden Purchase area. Now he's setting himself up as the big kahuna in his part of the Gadsden Purchase and he's throwing out all the anglo property owners.

The Gadsden Purchase was a piece of land covering about the bottom third of Arizona and a tiny corner of New Mexico with the Gila River as an approximate northern boundary. We purchased it from Mexico in 1853 at the behest of President Franklin Pierce and his Secretary of War Jefferson Davis. The idea was to have a southern transcontinental railway route and the land was necessary. Of course that route was not used first, the Civil War saw to that. James Gadsden is the guy who Pierce sent to Mexico to close the deal and the purchase is named for him.

Now I'm not sure whether part of the treaty was that Spanish land grants would be honored, but for the sake of this film it is the case. Tim Holt and Richard Martin have a ranch and they ain't about to let their property go.

Of course you know that this is some kind of crooked scheme afoot with classic western villain Harry Woods behind it. See the film if you are interested in what it is and how our saddle pals foil it.