Bataan Memorial Trainway
El Paso, El Paso County, Texas
Marker Inscription
With the arrival of the railroads to El Paso in 1881, the train tracks marked the northern boundary of the city. As El Paso grew, the tracks divided downtown and created a time-consuming barrier for pedestrians and motorists. In the early 20th century, a trainway was proposed to place the city's main railroad tracks below street level. In 1948, eight major contractors and 22 subcontractors began work on the project. Robert E. McKee General Contractor did the largest portion of the work-regrading the railroad lines, digging the entire trench and laying new tracks. A significant work of civil engineering, the trainway cost $5,500,000 and took more than three years to complete. Over 4,500 gondola cars of dirt were excavated and eight bridges were built over the tracks. A 1,700-foot overpass across cotton street, several blocks east of the trainway, completed the project. The trainway was named in honor of prisoners of war who died in enemy camps during World War II. The name Bataan was chosen to honor those soldiers-both Filipino and American-captured by the Japanese army after the fall of the Bataan Peninsula. Many of the American prisoners, including thousands from New Mexico and Texas, had trained at nearby Fort Bliss. The trainway was officially dedicated on August 21, 1950, and Southern Pacific's "Sunset Limited" became the first passenger train to operate on the newly completed trainway. With the completion of the Bataan Memorial Trainway, traffic flowed freely and safely through downtown, aiding the city's growth and prosperity. (2002)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When the railroads reached El Paso in 1881, their tracks became a wall through the growing downtown, snarling pedestrians and cars for decades. Between 1948 and 1950, an enormous civil-engineering effort sank the main lines into a trench below street level, excavating over 4,500 carloads of dirt and spanning the cut with eight bridges. Dedicated in 1950, the project was named for the American and Filipino prisoners of war who died after the fall of the Bataan Peninsula — many of them trained at nearby Fort Bliss.
Why it matters
The trainway married mid-century urban engineering to wartime memory, turning a piece of transportation infrastructure into a lasting tribute to the sacrifice of Bataan's captured soldiers.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The railroads reached El Paso in 1881, and almost overnight the town changed. Lines converging from several directions turned a remote border settlement into a key junction between the East, California and Mexico. Business boomed, population grew, and the city's future became tied to the rails.
That success came with a cost. The tracks ran along what was then the northern edge of town. As El Paso grew past them, they became a wall through the heart of the city. Trains blocked crossings, pedestrians waited, and cars idled as long freights rumbled past. It was a problem many American railroad towns shared, and it got worse as automobiles multiplied in the early twentieth century.
People proposed sinking the tracks below street level early in the century, but the project had to wait. Depression and then a world war put big civic works on hold. Only in the years after World War II, when American cities were investing heavily in roads, bridges and public works, did the trainway finally get built.
Those postwar years were also a time of remembering. Communities across the country were finding ways to honor those lost in the war, and in the Southwest the fall of Bataan was a deeply personal wound. That is how a drainage-and-grading project became a memorial.
People & events
The construction effort was enormous. Starting in 1948, eight major contractors and more than twenty subcontractors went to work. El Paso's own Robert E. McKee firm took on the biggest share: regrading the railroad lines, digging the whole trench and laying new track. Dirt came out by the trainload, more than 4,500 gondola cars of it, and crews built eight bridges so city streets could pass over the sunken rails.
The project ran more than three years and cost $5.5 million. A long overpass across Cotton Street, several blocks east, completed the work. When it opened, the familiar waits at downtown crossings were gone, and traffic could move freely above the trains.
The name is the heart of the story. In the spring of 1942, American and Filipino troops on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines surrendered to Japanese forces after months of desperate fighting. Tens of thousands of prisoners were then forced on a brutal march into captivity that became known as the Bataan Death March. Many died along the way, and many more died in the prison camps that followed.
The tragedy struck close to home here. Many of the American prisoners, including thousands from New Mexico and Texas, had trained at nearby Fort Bliss. To El Paso, Bataan was not a distant headline but a loss of neighbors, sons and friends. The trainway was dedicated on August 21, 1950, and Southern Pacific's Sunset Limited was the first passenger train to run through it.
Its place in the American story
The Bataan Memorial Trainway joins two big themes of mid-century America. One is the railroad's role in building western cities, and the costly work of re-engineering those cities once the automobile arrived. Sinking tracks below grade was a solution many towns considered; El Paso pulled off a major version of it.
The other theme is remembrance. Bataan became one of the defining tragedies of the Pacific War for the American public, a symbol of soldiers who held out against long odds and then suffered terribly in captivity. Naming the trainway for them tied everyday infrastructure to that memory, so every driver crossing above the tracks passes over a tribute.
The name also honors Filipino soldiers alongside Americans, a reminder that the defense of Bataan was a shared fight. That joint sacrifice is often left out of popular memory in the United States, and the marker deliberately puts it back in.
Finally, the Fort Bliss connection shows how deeply the Southwest was woven into the war. Distant battlefields reshaped hometowns across Texas and New Mexico, and memorials like this one are how those communities kept faith with the people they lost.
If you visit
Stand near the trainway and look down into the cut. It is easy to miss how much work it took, because it is designed to make itself invisible. Try to imagine downtown before 1950, when these same tracks ran at street level and a passing freight could stop the city in its tracks.
Watch for the bridges that carry the streets over the rails. Each one is part of the original design, and together they are what let El Paso grow as a single downtown instead of two halves split by the railroad. If a train passes below, you are seeing exactly what the engineers planned.
Take a quiet moment for the name, too. The trainway is a working piece of infrastructure, but it is also a memorial to people who never came home. For travelers interested in that history, Fort Bliss's long military story and the strong memory of Bataan across New Mexico make good threads to follow on a wider trip through the region.
With kids, this is a fun stop for anyone who loves trains or big construction projects. It is also a gentle way into a harder conversation about war and memory, and about why a city would name a railroad trench after soldiers.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related events
- · Bataan Death March
- · Fall of the Bataan Peninsula
Themes & tags
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