Why did these western states take so comparatively long to attain statehood, compared with neighboring states?
It would seem surprising to me if mere smaller populations and a longer time period to reach critical mass of population, which *should* be the main criterion, explains it all.
Washington state, with its good soil, moderate weather, navigable Columbia river, good ports, great lumber resources, and salmon stocks, seems like it logically should not have had to wait until 1889, 31 years after its southern sister state of Oregon, for admission to the Union. Washington, a coastal state and home of Seattle, oddly had to wait for admission alongside a class of states that included such desolate “big sky” country as the northern Rockies and plains states of Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas. Seems odd.
And then New Mexico- not admitted until the twentieth century, 1911. Yet Zach Taylor had considered fast tracking admission of New Mexico as a state (admittedly probably a much larger version, covering the whole Great Basin) as early as 1850. And hadn’t the core Rio Grande valley of New Mexico, up through Santa Fe, been the *oldest* continuous concentration of European settlement in North America, west of the Mississippi, and north of Mexico proper? Was it truly in the late nineteenth century and first decade of the 20th, consistently less populous than 46 other contiguous states?
If my suspicions on population are correct and Washington and/or New Mexico had raw population to be admitted as states earlier, before, for example arid wastes like Nevada, mountain frontiers like Colorado, or the northern Rockies and Dakotas, what non-population factors might have been holding these territories back?
It would seem surprising to me if mere smaller populations and a longer time period to reach critical mass of population, which *should* be the main criterion, explains it all.
Washington state, with its good soil, moderate weather, navigable Columbia river, good ports, great lumber resources, and salmon stocks, seems like it logically should not have had to wait until 1889, 31 years after its southern sister state of Oregon, for admission to the Union. Washington, a coastal state and home of Seattle, oddly had to wait for admission alongside a class of states that included such desolate “big sky” country as the northern Rockies and plains states of Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas. Seems odd.
And then New Mexico- not admitted until the twentieth century, 1911. Yet Zach Taylor had considered fast tracking admission of New Mexico as a state (admittedly probably a much larger version, covering the whole Great Basin) as early as 1850. And hadn’t the core Rio Grande valley of New Mexico, up through Santa Fe, been the *oldest* continuous concentration of European settlement in North America, west of the Mississippi, and north of Mexico proper? Was it truly in the late nineteenth century and first decade of the 20th, consistently less populous than 46 other contiguous states?
If my suspicions on population are correct and Washington and/or New Mexico had raw population to be admitted as states earlier, before, for example arid wastes like Nevada, mountain frontiers like Colorado, or the northern Rockies and Dakotas, what non-population factors might have been holding these territories back?
