New Mexico’s appeal for statehood – greeting President Roosevelt at Albuquerque, Underwood & Underwood, c1903 June 11. Courtesy Library of Congress

Teddy Roosevelt, speaking in Santa Fe, NM, May 5, 1903, during his grand western tour:

I build no small hope upon the aid that under the wise law of Congress will ultimately be extended to this as to other States and Territories in the way of governmental aid to irrigation. Irrigation is of course to be in the future well-nigh the most potent factor in the agricultural development of this Territory and one of the factors which will do most toward bringing it up to Statehood. Nothing will count more than development of that kind in bringing the Territory in as a State. That is the kind of development which I am most anxious to see here the development that means permanent growth in the capacity of the land, not temporary, not the exploiting of the land for a year or two at the cost of its future impoverishment, but the building up of farm and ranch in such shape as to benefit the home-maker whose intention it is that this Territory of the present, this State of the future, shall be a great State in the American Union.

(I’m a little confused by the dates, but the picture appears to be from that same tour, possibly taken on the same day as his Santa Fe speech.)