United States and Mexican Boundary Commission

The Joint United States and Mexican Boundary Commission was stipulated by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which ended the Mexican–American War in 1848.

The Joint Commission was required to carefully survey and mark the new boundary which had only been imprecisely described in the treaty between the two countries.

[1] Each country appointed a commissioner and a surveyor to jointly lead the project and the group met for the first time in San Diego on July 6, 1849.

The survey was expected to take only a year, but the effort was poorly funded and fraught with internal dissension and personnel turnover, especially within the American contingent.

In addition, neither country had appreciated the extremely difficult terrain through which the survey would be conducted.