San Jacinto Plaza
El Paso, El Paso County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1857, W. T. Smith sold his property which he called the "town of El Paso" for $6500.00. The buyers were J. S. and H. S. Gillette, J. F. Crosby, J. W. Morton and V. St. Vrain; they had it surveyed by Anson Mills. The map showed downtown El Paso much as it is today, including a public square which they donated to the future city of El Paso, Incorporated in 1873. This plot of ground, a haven for the weary traveler, has seen and heard the life of this area march by since Spanish colonial times. It saw rumbling ox-drawn carts, the first U.S. soldiers, covered wagons. Then Jeff Davis's Camel Corps, stage coaches, the blast of six-guns and the first locomotive whistles, and law and order emerging. The years brought concerts, political and patriotic speeches, presidents visiting and marching soldiers of our wars. It was designated "The Plaza" by the 1889 city fathers, but the 1902 council permanently and officially named it San Jacinto Plaza. Presented by The State National Bank of El Paso, Texas 30 July 1965
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This downtown El Paso square has watched the crossroads of the Southwest pass by since Spanish colonial times. When a group of buyers purchased and platted the townsite in 1857, they set aside this public plot and later donated it to the incorporated city — a shady resting place that saw ox carts, covered wagons, Jefferson Davis's experimental Camel Corps, stagecoaches, and the first railroad whistles. In 1902 the city fathers permanently named it San Jacinto Plaza.
Why it matters
Few spots so vividly compress the layered history of the borderlands — Spanish, Mexican, and American — into a single town square at the pass between two nations.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Anson Mills
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
El Camino Real (The King's Highway)
El Paso, TX
El Camino Real, the 'King's Highway,' was the great royal road linking Mexico City to the far northern Kingdom of New Mexico across the vast Spanish empire. From 1581 onward, conquistadors, priests, merchants, and settlers passed this way, their ox-carts and mule-trains carrying the traffic of a new realm. For centuries the road was the artery of Spanish colonial life in the Southwest.
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.
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.
This Block was the Site of the Stage Station
El Paso, TX
This block was once the El Paso stop on the Butterfield Southern Overland Mail, the ambitious stagecoach line that carried passengers and mail between St. Louis and San Francisco. From 1858 to 1861, twice-weekly coaches linked the far corners of a growing nation across a vast stretch of frontier, until the coming of the Civil War severed the southern route.