El Paso
El Paso, El Paso County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Inhabited by various Indian tribes prior to the arrival of the Spaniards in the 16th century, El Paso has played an important role in the history of Mexico and the United States. Its four centuries of recorded history span periods of Spanish colonization, Mexican rule, and Anglo railroad building and industrialization. Early settlements were established on the south side of the Rio Grande at El Paso del Norte (the pass of the north). After the Rio Grande became a boundary between the United States and Mexico, a settlement called Franklin grew up on the north side of the river and eventually took the name El Paso. The original El Paso del Norte settlement on the south side became Ciudad Juarez. The establishment of Fort Bliss in 1854, the arrival of the Butterfield Overland Mail route in 1858, and the building of the railroads in the 1880s brought an economic boom and increased population. The flourishing frontier community became the seat of El Paso county government in 1883. Its proximity to mining areas in northern Mexico, New Mexico, and Arizona, combined with its geographic location on the international border made El Paso a multi-cultural, multifaceted city unique among Texas communities. (1991) Incise on the base: Dr. W.H. Timmons Fund, El Paso Community Foundation
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
El Paso's story runs four centuries deep, from the Indian peoples who lived here before the Spanish arrived in the 1500s through Spanish colonization, Mexican rule, and Anglo industrialization. The Rio Grande became an international border, splitting the old El Paso del Norte into what became Ciudad Juárez to the south and El Paso to the north. Fort Bliss in 1854, the Butterfield Overland Mail in 1858, and the railroads of the 1880s brought booming growth to this crossroads at the pass.
Why it matters
Perched on the border beside mining country, El Paso became one of the great multicultural gateways of the American Southwest, where Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo histories converge.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Pioneer Plaza
El Paso, TX
Pioneer Plaza was the beating heart of early El Paso, a shaded, tree-lined square where military bands played and a U.S. Army guard stood watch in the late 1870s against Apache raids. Great overland arteries met here — El Paso Street running south to Mexico, San Francisco Street west toward California, and the Butterfield stage line clipping its corner — making it a true crossroads of the Southwest. In 1909 Presidents Taft and Díaz swept through the plaza en route to their historic border summit before the little square was eclipsed by larger San Jacinto Plaza.
The Pass of the North
El Paso, TX
Where the Rio Grande cuts between the mountains at El Paso lies the Pass of the North, the northernmost Rocky Mountain gap that stays free of snow year-round. Indigenous peoples traveled it for centuries before Spanish explorers arrived, and Juan de Oñate drove the first cattle into what is now the United States through it in 1598. In the 1849 gold rush and after, stage lines and railroads all funneled through this natural gateway.
Casa Ortiz
Socorro, TX
Tradition holds that this thick-walled adobe near Socorro was built before 1800, in the era of New Spain's far northern frontier. By the 1840s it belonged to José Ortiz, a 'Comanchero' whose ox-cart trains hauled salt from the Guadalupe Mountains and carried goods to Santa Fe and out onto the Llano Estacado, where he traded with the Comanches for buffalo hides and meat. With its cottonwood and willow vigas and earthen roof, the house is a fine surviving example of Spanish colonial frontier building.
El Paso
Anthony, TX
Named for the mountain pass that gave it life, El Paso has long been a gateway—first for Indigenous peoples, then for Spanish priests, gold-seekers, traders, and stagecoaches funneling through the Rio Grande corridor. Federal troops occupied this borderland longer than any other part of Texas during the Civil War, and the city grew into an agricultural, industrial, and military center dotted with Spanish missions.