30 December 1853: The Gadsden Purchase is signed
US minister James Gadsden signed a treaty to buy about 30,000 square miles of land from Mexico, in what is now southern Arizona and New Mexico, mainly to provide a flat route for a southern transcontinental railroad. The US Senate later cut the price to $10 million. The land came to host a railroad, copper mines and the city of Tucson, making it one of history's better real estate deals.
The lesson: Land bought for its future use can be worth far more than its current price suggests.
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
Play Sixty-40