Socorro
Socorro, El Paso County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Site of the mission and pueblo of Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion Del Pueblo de Socorro established by Don Antonio de Otermin and Father Fray Francisco Ayeta, O.F.M. in 1683. Maintained by Franciscan missionaries for the civilizing and Christianizing of the Piro, Thano and Gemex Indians, refugees after the pueblo revolt in New Mexico. Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1683, in the wake of the Pueblo Revolt that drove Spanish colonists and their Native allies out of New Mexico, Franciscan missionaries founded the mission and pueblo of Nuestra Señora de la Concepción here along the Rio Grande. It became a refuge for Piro, Tano, and Jemez people who had fled south, resettled in one of the oldest continuously occupied communities in Texas. The mission anchored a string of Spanish outposts that would shape the El Paso valley for centuries.
Why it matters
Socorro is a living remnant of Spain's colonial frontier and of the displaced Pueblo peoples whose flight after 1680 reshaped the entire Southwest.
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Related people
- · Antonio de Otermín
- · Francisco Ayeta
Related events
- · Pueblo Revolt of 1680
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mission Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion Del Socorro
Socorro, TX
Founded in 1680 for Piros Indians who fled south during the Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico, Socorro's mission became — with nearby Ysleta — one of the oldest continuously occupied settlements in the Southwest. By 1750 the town counted nearly 500 Indians alongside a few dozen Spaniards. The present adobe church, built about 1840 with walls several feet thick, blends the basic Spanish mission form with distinct Indian craftsmanship.
Socorro Mission La Purísima
Socorro, TX
When the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 drove Spanish colonists and their Piro Indian allies out of New Mexico, the refugees resettled downriver and named their new home Socorro after the community they had left. Their first adobe church rose in 1691; the present structure was begun after a destructive 1829 flood and finished in 1840 — the same flood that shifted the Rio Grande and, once the river became the U.S.–Mexico border, placed Socorro in the United States. Governed in turn by Franciscans, diocesan priests, and Jesuits, the mission has witnessed Spanish, Mexican, and American rule.
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.
Early Site of Socorro Mission
Socorro, TX
When Pueblo peoples of northern New Mexico rose against Spanish rule in the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, refugees — Spanish colonists and allied Indians alike — fled southeast down the Rio Grande to the El Paso del Norte area. There the Franciscans founded Mission Santa Maria de Socorro del Sur, and by 1691 a permanent adobe church rose here beside a Piro Indian pueblo. Floods eventually destroyed it, and after the river shifted in 1829 the present Socorro mission was built nearby; excavations in the 1980s confirmed this as the oldest known mission site in Texas.