Balsas Valley Navigation and Improvement Company Documents, 1904 - 1932 (MSS 556)

The Balsas Valley Navigation and Improvement Company was founded as an outgrowth of a navigation concession granted by the Mexican government on March 18, 1909. Confirmed by full Congress on April 8, 1909, the contract granted Luis Terrazas, Jr. and Frank S. Kirkland the rights to navigate the full distance of the Rio Balsas through the states of Michoacan and Guerrero. Terrazas, the son of the prominent governor of the state of Chihuahua, and Kirkland, an engineer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, formed a partnership that benefited from the political connections of the Mexican national and the technical skill of the American engineer. Establishing offices in both Chihuahua and Mexico City, the company aimed to become a great trading monopoly by creating a riverboat-railroad system that would allow the Balsas Valley's great resources of timber, ores, and agriculture to be removed and transported from the region.

With initial surveys of the valley completed in 1911, the company set up temporary promotional offices in El Paso in order to attract wealthy investors from the United States. As the primary developer of transportation facilities in the Balsas Valley region, the company easily commanded the attention of U.S. capitalists eager to export timber from Michoacan. Other American investors with interests in the region's natural resources were also drawn to the company. In December of 1911, a group of potential investors embarked on a highly publicized five-month long inspection trip on the Balsas. Mindful of the region's potential value but wary of immediately investing in a country beset by political and economic unrest, a corporation headed by one of these investors intended to buy the entire company and acquire the original transportation concession once peace had been established in the country. Assured by experts on the inspection trip that the river could be made navigable with the blasting of a few rocks, members of the corporation made capital available that enabled the company to begin work on clearing the channel. The investment also made it possible for the company to purchase its first steamboat, which was christened the "Coyuca" after the town of the same name on the upper Balsas.

With the death of Frank S. Kirkland in October of 1912 and the unwelcomed effects of the Mexican Revolution on business in the region, the company became relatively inactive during the next decade. In his will, Kirkland granted one-fourth of the company to William C. Ammerman, an American mining engineer who had served as Kirkland's assistant since 1906. Ammerman attempted to revive interest in the company after Kirkland's death but the country's political situation and the growing number of investors interested in oil rather than ores frustrated his efforts to acquire the capital needed to continue Kirkland's work. The company lost its concession through non-compliance and was dismantled in 1921.