Sixty years ago, when Dwight Eisenhower moved into the White House, America’s southern frontier was as porous as a colander. Three million illegal migrants had walked or waded across the border looking for jobs in California, Arizona, or Texas, and more were coming in from Mexico every day.

Farmers and ranchers along the border had become so dependent on the low-cost labor that it was hurting domestic workers – cotton pickers in the Rio Grande Valley now earned about half the wages paid elsewhere in the state.

Ike was concerned not only by the illegal border-crossings, but also by corruption. Apparently, some ranchers had friends among immigration officials. Agents complained that when they searched farms and ranches, a phone call to officials in El Paso would be made, and a politician would intervene.

In 1954, Ike appointed retired Gen. Joseph “Jumpin’ Joe” Swing, a West Point classmate and veteran of the 101st Airborne, as the new INS commissioner. Senators Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas and Pat McCarran of Nevada were dead set against strong border enforcement, but General Swing’s close connections to the president shielded the Border Patrol from meddling by powerful interests, and one of Swing’s first acts was to transfer certain entrenched immigration officials away from the border to regions where their political connections would have no effect.

Then on June 17, 1954, 750 agents swept northward through California and Arizona agricultural areas as “Operation Wetback” launched. By the end of July, over 50,000 illegal farmworkers had been caught in the dragnet. By mid-July, the raids extended into Utah, Nevada, Idaho, and Texas. By September, 80,000 had been taken into custody in Texas alone.

Those apprehended in the roundup were not simply released at the border. Buses and trains transported them deep within Mexico before being set free. Tens of thousands more were put aboard two ships, the Emancipation and the Mercurio, for a harsh sea voyage from Port Isabel, Texas, to Vera Cruz, Mexico, more than 500 miles south.

The INS extended the crackdown to the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. Within a year a million illegal immigrants had been deported, and another million fled back to Mexico on their own.

Source: Christian Science Monitor, John Dillin, July 6, 2006

Six schooners and three sloops assembled in the upper bay of New York harbor, and a holiday atmosphere overtook the city as the offices and counting houses let out early. The men of large business, brokers, and jobbers requisitioned every craft that could float, from skiffs to large excursion steamers, and thousands of spectators, all New York who could get there, went out in boats or picnicked along the shore to view the spectacle. It was a novel sporting event, promising cutthroat competition and a parade of sails, and wagers up to $500 were routinely traded as the yachts neared the line.

William Edgar’s schooner Cygnet was about forty-five tons, sixty feet long perhaps; while James Roger’s little sloop Ada was about a third that size. The other schooner contenders included C R Miller’s Sybil (42 tons), Vice Commodore Hamilton Wilkes’s Spray (37 tons), John C Jay’s La Coquille (27 tons), J Waterbury’s Minna (30 tons), and Commodore John C Stevens’s Gimcrack (25 tons), while the sloops included H Robinson’s Newburgh (33 tons) and G B Rollins’s Lancet (20 tons).

The boats were handicapped based on their weight. Calculating their tonnage by custom house measurement, 45 seconds per ton was allowed at the start. The schooner yachts were built wide with perpendicular or slightly convex stems, square sterns, short standing bowsprits, and no fore topmasts. Balloon canvas of all sorts was unknown and no one ever had to lay out to muzzle the jib topsail because there was not any. The spinnaker did not yet exist.

The course ran east from a stake-boat off Robbins Reef near the New Jersey shore, to a stake-boat off Bay Ridge, Long Island, then back to a stake-boat off Stapleton, Staten Island then out and around the Southwest Spit buoy, and returned back over the same course.

In a brisk breeze, with close competition on both the upwind tacks and the broad reaches, the biggest boat,  Cygnet,  won in 5 hours 23 minutes and 15 seconds, with Sybil coming in second, two minutes behind, and Gimcrack another five minutes behind the Sybil.

The prize was as good a cup as could be purchased with the entrance money, which was twenty-five dollars for each yacht. Commodore J C Stevens, “a mighty good fellow and a most hospitable host,” was delighted by the success of the regatta, even though he came in third, and the annual gathering of racing yachts continues to this day.

United States Army Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, Jr. headed west out from Fort Bellefontaine, Missouri on July 15, 1806 with a detachment of 20 soldiers and 50 Osage hostages.

Thomas Jefferson had commissioned the Lewis and Clark Expedition two years previously to explore the northern regions of the Louisiana Purchase, and now he wanted a second military party to explore the more southern Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains.

The expedition first headed up the Missouri to the Osage River, where Pike returned the hostages to their home villages and parleyed with the natives. Striking northwest, the group made for the Pawnee territory on the Republican River. On September 29, Pike met with the Pawnee tribal council and announced the protectorship of the United States over the territory, instructing the Pawnee to remove a Spanish flag from their village and to fly the Stars and Stripes instead.

The expeditionary force turned south and struck out across the prairie for the Arkansas River. After reaching it on October 14, the party split in two. One group, led by Lieutenant James Wilkinson, traveled downstream along the length of the Arkansas to its mouth and back up the Mississippi, safely returning to St. Louis.

Pike led the other, larger group to the west, toward the headwaters of the Arkansas. The plains were windswept and desolate and seemingly endless, but after a month, on November 15, Pike spied a distant snowcapped mountain which he called “Grand Peak”. Pike and his men tried to climb the peak, which now bears his name, hoping to survey the surrounding area, but the party was not equipped to climb the 14,000-foot summit with winter closing in.

Pike pressed on up the Arkansas, and on December 7 the party reached Royal Gorge canyon at the southern end of the front range of the Rocky Mountains. Heading north, the party found the South Fork of the Platte River and, following it upstream, came to what they thought were the headwaters of the Red. Turning back downstream, they returned to the point at which they had left the Arkansas and realized that they had just executed a large loop, wasting weeks of precious travel time.

Hungry, cold, and exhausted, the party headed south. Several men dropped behind from fatigue, but Pike pressed on. By January 30, he and ten men camped at the Rio Grande in southern Colorado. They built a fort and attempted to collect their comrades who were strewn behind across miles of wilderness.

On February 26, Spanish soldiers from nearby Santa Fe discovered the fort and arrested Pike and his men as spies. The Spanish marched them south to Chihuahua. The Mexican Governor complained of the foray, but treated Pike as a gentleman and released him and his officers, although he did hold several of the enlisted soldiers in jail for years. After filing a formal protest with the United States Government, the Spanish military escorted Pike north through Texas.

On July 1, 1807, Zebulon Pike crossed over to Natchitoches on the Louisiana border, and his western odyssey came to an end.

President William Howard Taft finished his lunch a little after two, and accompanied by his secretary and his military aide, he strolled onto the South Portico of the White House. It was overcast and sprinkling a bit and the birds were chirping in the trees, and he could see down the south lawn past the fountain and the ellipse, to where crowds had gathered on Pennsylvania Avenue and beyond, towards the Washington Monument.

A faint buzzing could be heard just above the noise of the crowd, and then his aide pointed south. The buzz grew louder into a steady growl, and then with the easy grace of some great creature of the skies, a flying machine appeared, sailing over the trees.
Harry Atwood had only been flying for three months, but he had graduated from MIT and had trained with the Wright Brothers and he had just flown in from Boston in his new aeroplane, the Moth, and he had come to greet the President.

As The Moth approached the row of tall trees at the south end of the lawn, Harry cut the motor – the brisk breeze held him back a bit – he had to gun it again to clear the top branches – then he shut off the power and glided in over the big fountain, and coasted to a halt twenty-five feet from the President.

The spectators crowded about the aeroplane and Atwood’s mother rushed in to embrace her son, and then she beamed with pride as he climbed out of his craft and was escorted to meet the President of the United States and the officers of the Aero Club.

President Taft had been watching intently, his eyes shaded by his hands, and with a bright smile he welcomed the young aviator and enthusiastically shook his hand. In a short speech, he proclaimed “a new chapter in the thrills of the flying art” and awarded Harry a gold medal in honor of his feat.

Atwood thanked the President and then directly returned to The Moth. Firing up the motor, he turned the craft around and headed briskly back down the lawn towards the ellipse. For a few moments it looked as if the craft would not be able to rise from the ground and would strike the stone coping around the fountain. But just as he neared the fountain his machine began to lift, and he cleared the fountain by a good twenty feet. The Moth soared quickly above the tree tops, and with the crowd applauding heartily, sailed just over the top of the Washington Monument, and then on, out of sight, into the overcast sky.