Rousing Images from the Line City / by Jose Ramon Garcia

Wheatmark, 2021. Trade pb. VG. 

Nogales, the two Nogaleses, or the line cities, one in Arizona and the other one in Old Mexico, but just one at heart, are sister cities that owe the genesis of their existence to the arrival of the iron horse to the border on October 25, 1882. The birth of Nogales as we know it happened when the New Mexico and Arizona RR Co. built its road from Benson, A.T., to the border at Nogales, and when the Sonora Railway Co. Ltd. built its road from Guaymas, Sonora, to Nogales. From the very beginning, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe people, who owned these railroads, had their sights on Nogales and Guaymas—the future "San Francisco of Mexico"—slated to become the western terminus of the Southern Transcontinental Railroad; a rail link between the frozen north and the tropical south. The hope and expectation of the Santa Fe people would be that their huge investment of building a rail link to the seaport of Guaymas would pay off immediately with the increase of trade between the United States and Mexico—and the "China trade," too—it'd generate, and the inland port to the US would be at Nogales. It'd also be a 1,500-mile shortcut from ocean to ocean and more weather friendly during the winter months. It'd further enable people to travel to and fro between these two great countries with ease with its novel passenger service. With the massive influx of commerce this road would bring, mostly from the mining, agriculture, and cattle-raising sectors, Nogales would grow and prosper. This book, then, a coffee-table book of sorts, attempts to paint a short history of Old Nogales in pictorial form bearing in mind that such a history could only be half-told in that there're so many images to select from but aren't always available. It's on this basis that Jose Ramon Garcia presents this history with the images he's managed to collect despite the pitfalls.