Old San Francisco Historic District
El Paso, El Paso County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Composed primarily of early twentieth-century residential apartment buildings, this historic neighborhood was developed during a period of major growth in El Paso. Most of the structures were built of brick, stone, or wood between 1908 and 1923 and feature similar architectural elements. The name of the district is taken from the likeness of the hilly terrain to that of San Francisco, California. In addition, the area was developed on what was the northern side of the El Paso - San Francisco Stage Route during the 1800s. (1984)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This El Paso neighborhood took shape between 1908 and 1923, during a period of rapid growth in the city, as blocks of brick, stone, and wood apartment buildings rose with shared architectural character. Residents named it "San Francisco" for its hilly terrain, which reminded them of the California city. The name carried a double meaning: the district also lay along the old El Paso–San Francisco stage route that had crossed the region in the 1800s.
Why it matters
The district preserves the texture of early 20th-century urban El Paso and quietly memorializes the overland stage routes that first knit the far Southwest to the Pacific coast.
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Related events
- · El Paso–San Francisco stage route
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
El Paso Union Passenger Station
El Paso, TX
Built in 1904–05, the El Paso Union Passenger Station rose as the hub of the city's busy international railroad traffic on the U.S.–Mexico border. It was designed by the celebrated Chicago architect Daniel H. Burnham — the same firm behind Washington, D.C.'s Union Station — and stands today as a monument to the railroads that drove El Paso's early growth.
Bataan Memorial Trainway
El Paso, TX
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.
El Paso & Southwestern Railroad Locomotive Number One
El Paso, TX
Built in 1857 as a 4-4-0 "Classic American" locomotive, this engine began life hauling freight and passengers across the upper Midwest before a second career in the Southwest. By 1889 the line that became the El Paso & Southwestern Railroad had acquired it, converted it from wood to coal, and put it to work opening the mining country around Bisbee, Arizona. Dubbed "Old Number One," it served more than fifty years before retirement, later starring briefly on film and finding a permanent home in El Paso.
El Paso
El Paso, TX
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.