In 1846, while leading the Mormon Battalion to California during the Mexican War, Lt. Col. Philip St. George Cooke blazed a wagon road from New Mexico to the West Coast. The route’s potential use for railroad construction was one of the reasons for the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. Cooke entered Arizona through Guadalupe Pass. The Basin and Range province of southeast New Mexico consists of broad alluvial plains from which isolated fault-block mountains rise like islands in a sandy sea. Indigenous peoples have used both the basin and range in their seasonal cycle. The Victorio Mountains to the south yield zinc, silver, gold, copper, lead, and tungsten.