United States Ports of Entry -- Historical and Current

Question

Is there a compilation of the US ports of entry and their changes over the past 100 years (or any time period within this range)?

Specifically interested in the US-Mexico port of entries. The wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mexico%E2%80%93United_States_border_crossings) seems to have a complete list of the current crossings, but not when they were built and their list of closed crossings is flagged as incomplete.

Having details, such as the type of traffic allowed and whether it was one-way or two-way, would also be useful, but not necessary.

Answer 1

Department of Transportation has Border Crossing/Entry Data that you can query; Running one for all ports provides CSV you can use, providing all border-crossings between US/Mexico. It goes back to 1995, so you can cross reference for changes, but not as definitive as you are asking for. Also, I'm assuming you can gleam some of the details you desire from it (it is transportation statistics) but not 100% on that.

DOT Border/Crossing Entry Time Series Analysis allows queries by transportation type, so you can probably get that information there.

Atlas of the Land Entry Ports on the U.S. – Mexico Border by Western Washington University (PDF) has an in-depth look at these crossings, and also provided the link that directed me to the border crossing data posted first.

EDIT/UPDATE: Here's the Complete Official List of Border Crossings (PDF)

Answer 2

Have you checked out this dataset from the Department of Homeland Security?

Contains:

• Locations of all border crossing between the U.S.-Mexico (and U.S.-Canada)
• Counts of crossings by type (truck, train, personal vehicle passengers, etc.) for the year 2013.

Drawbacks:

• Dataset is only a snapshot for the year 2013. Does not contain any historical data.