By Mark Trecka Inside the Saddle and Spur Tavern in Douglas, Arizona, it is easy to forget that about a mile south down G Street, just past the Douglas Meat Warehouse, the United States ends and Mexico begins. It is easy to forget that the U.S.-Mexico border is a mile away even though the Saddle and Spur doubles as the Gadsden Hotel’s bar. Opened in 1907, the hotel is named for the 1853 Gadsden Purchase, in which John Gadsden, the American ambassador to Mexico, negotiated the $10 million purchase of 30,000 square miles of Mexico. The deal determined the line of 1,945 miles that is the present-day border
Over the course of June and July, 2016, Beacon Press published my four-part series on Postcommodity’s “Repellent Fence,” the largest binational land art installation in history. Follow the link above to read “Part One” and continue through the rest of the installments by following the successive links at the end of each.
