La Isla Cemetery
Fabens, El Paso County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Established 1910 Historic Texas Cemetery – 2016
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Established in 1910, La Isla Cemetery served the farming community of Fabens in the lower El Paso valley, where cotton and other irrigated crops were taking hold along the Rio Grande. The cemetery grew alongside the Mexican and Anglo families who worked this borderland during a period of rapid agricultural settlement. It is recognized today as a Historic Texas Cemetery.
Why it matters
Cemeteries like La Isla mark the communities that irrigation and the railroad brought to the border valley, preserving the heritage of the families who built agricultural West Texas.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Salt War
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For generations, the salt lakes near San Elizario had been a shared resource that Hispanic communities of the El Paso valley gathered from freely. When private interests moved to control access in the 1870s, resentment boiled over into the El Paso Salt War of 1877, a violent clash that cost many lives and much property. The conflict remains one of the most turbulent episodes in the history of the far West Texas borderlands.
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Around 1855 the farmer and rancher Gregorio Nacenseno García built this territorial-style adobe as his family home, its distinctive inset gallery — the portal — giving it the name Los Portales. By the 1870s it had become a schoolhouse, and its first teacher, Octaviano Larrazolo, went on to serve as governor of New Mexico and a United States senator. The building ties the Hispanic ranching world of the Rio Grande to a nationally significant political career.
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Juan de Onate Expedition - 1598
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