Founding
city in and county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States
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El Paso (; Spanish: [el ˈpaso] ⓘ, lit. 'the route' or 'the pass') is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States. It is the 23rd-most populous city in the U.S., sixth-most populous city in Texas, and the most populous city in West Texas with a population of 678,815 at the 2020 census. The El Paso metropolitan area has an estimated 879,000 residents.
El Paso stands on the Rio Grande across the Mexico–United States border from Ciudad Juárez, the most populous city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. On the U.S. side, the El Paso metropolitan area forms part of the larger El Paso–Las Cruces combined statistical area with Las Cruces, New Mexico with a population of 1,108,758. These three cities form a combined international metropolitan area sometimes referred to as the Paso del Norte or the Borderplex, a region of 2.7 million people which constitutes the largest bilingual and binational workforce in the Western Hemisphere.
The city is home to three publicly traded companies, and is also home to the Medical Center of the Americas, the only medical research and care provider complex in West Texas, and the University of Texas at El Paso, the city's primary university. The city hosts the annual Sun Bowl college football postseason game, the second-oldest bowl game in the country. El Paso has a strong federal and military presence. William Beaumont Army Medical Center, Biggs Army Airfield, and Fort Bliss are located in the area. The Drug Enforcement Administration domestic field division 7, El Paso Intelligence Center, Joint Task Force North, United States Border Patrol El Paso Sector, and the U.S. Border Patrol Special Operations Group are also headquartered in El Paso.
El Paso is a five-time All-America City Award winner, winning in 1969, 2010, 2018, 2020, and 2021, and Congressional Quarterly ranked it in the top-three safest large cities in the United States between 1997 and 2014, including holding the title of the safest city between 2011 and 2014. El Paso is also the second-largest absolute-majority-Hispanic city in the United States (after San Antonio), with 81% of its residents being Hispanic, and the largest city in the US with an absolute Hispanic majority throughout all of its history.
The El Paso region has had human settlement for thousands of years, as evidenced by Folsom points from hunter-gatherers found at Hueco Tanks. This suggests 10,000 to 12,000 years of human habitation. The earliest known cultures in the region were maize farmers. When the Spanish arrived, the Manso, Suma, and Jumano tribes populated the area. These were subsequently incorporated into the mestizo culture, along with immigrants from central Mexico, captives from Comanchería, and genízaros of various ethnic groups. The Mescalero Apache were also present.
The Chamuscado and Rodríguez Expedition trekked through present-day El Paso and forded the Rio Grande where they visited the land that is present-day New Mexico in 1581–1582. The expedition was led by Francisco Sánchez, called "El Chamuscado", and Fray Agustín Rodríguez, the first Spaniards known to have walked along the Rio Grande and visited the Pueblo Indians since Francisco Vásquez de Coronado 40 years earlier. Spanish explorer Don Juan de Oñate was born in 1550 in Zacatecas, Zacatecas, Mexico, and was the first New Spain (Mexico) explorer known to have rested and stayed 10 days by the Rio Grande near El Paso, in 1598, celebrating a Thanksgiving Mass there on April 30, 1598. Four survivors of the Narváez expedition, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, and an enslaved native of Morocco, Estevanico, are thought to have crossed the Rio Grande into present-day Mexico about 75 miles south of El Paso in 1535. El Paso del Norte (present-day Ciudad Juárez) was founded on the south bank of the Río Bravo del Norte (Rio Grande), in 1659 by Fray Garcia de San Francisco. In 1680, the small village of El Paso became the temporary base for Spanish governance of the territory of New Mexico as a result of the Pueblo Revolt, until 1692, when Santa Fe was reconquered and once again became the capital.
The Texas Revolution (1836) was generally not felt in the region, as the American population was small, not more than 10% of the population. However, the region was claimed by Texas as part of the treaty signed with Mexico and numerous attempts were made by Texas to bolster these claims, but the villages that consisted of what is now El Paso and the surrounding area remained essentially a self-governed community with both representatives of the Mexican and Texan governments negotiating for control until Texas, having become a U.S. state in 1845, irrevocably took control in 1846. During this interregnum, 1836–1848, Americans nonetheless continued to settle the region. As early as the mid-1840s, alongside long extant Hispanic settlements such as the Rancho de Juan María Ponce de León, Anglo-American settlers such as Simeon Hart and Hugh Stephenson had established thriving communities of American settlers owing allegiance to Texas. Stephenson, who had married into the local Hispanic aristocracy, established the Rancho de San José de la Concordia, which became the nucleus of Anglo-American and Hispanic settlement within the limits of modern-day El Paso, in 1844: the Republic of Texas, which claimed the area, wanted a chunk of the Santa Fe trade. During the Mexican–American War, the Battle of El Bracito was fought nearby on Christmas Day, 1846. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo effectively made the settlements on the north bank of the river part of the US, separate from Old El Paso del Norte on the Mexican side. The present New Mexico–Texas boundary placing El Paso on the Texas side was drawn in the Compromise of 1850.
El Paso remained the largest settlement in New Mexico as part of the Republic of Mexico until its cession to the U.S. in 1848, when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo specified the border was to run north of El Paso De Norte around the Ciudad Juárez Cathedral which became part of the state of Chihuahua.
El Paso County was established in March 1850, with San Elizario as the first county seat. The United States Senate fixed a boundary between Texas and New Mexico at the 32nd parallel, thus largely ignoring history and topography. A military post called the "Post opposite El Paso" (meaning opposite El Paso del Norte, across the Rio Grande) was established in 1849 on Coons' Rancho beside the settlement of Franklin, which became the nucleus of the future El Paso, Texas; after the army left in 1851, the rancho went into default and was repossessed; in 1852, a post office was established on the rancho bearing the name El Paso as an example of cross-border town naming until El Paso del Norte was renamed Juarez in 1888. After changing hands twice more, the El Paso company was set up in 1859 and bought the property, hiring Anson Mills to survey and lay out the town, thus forming the current street plan of downtown El Paso.
In Beyond the Mississippi (1867), Albert D. Richardson, traveling to California via coach, described El Paso as he found it in late 1859:
"The Texan town of El Paso had four hundred inhabitants, chiefly Mexicans. Its businessmen were Americans, but Spanish was the prevailing language. All the features were Mexican: low, flat adobe buildings, shading cottonwoods under which dusky, smoking women and swarthy children sold fruit, vegetables, and bread; habitual gambling universal, from the boys' game of pitching quartillas (three-cent coins) to the great saloons where huge piles of silver dollars were staked at monte. In this little village, a hundred thousand dollars often changed hands in a single night through the potent agencies of Monte and poker. There were only two or three American ladies, and most of the whites kept Mexican mistresses. All goods were brought on wagons from the Gulf of Mexico and sold at an advance of three or four hundred percent on Eastern prices.
From hills overlooking the town, the eye takes in a charming picture—a far-stretching valley, enriched with orchards, vineyards, and cornfields, through which the river traces a shining pathway. Across it appears the flat roofs and cathedral towers of the old Mexican El Paso; still further, dim misty mountains melt into the blue sky."
During the Civil War, Confederate military forces were in the area until it was captured by the Union California Column in August 1862. It was then headquarters for the 5th Regiment California Volunteer Infantry from August 1863 until December 1864.
After the Civil War's conclusion, the town's population began to grow as white Texans continued to move into the villages and soon became the majority. El Paso itself, incorporated in 1873, encompassed the small area of communities that had developed along the river. In the 1870s, a population of 23 non-Hispanic Whites and 150 Hispanics was reported. With the arrival of the Southern Pacific, Texas and Pacific, and Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroads in 1881, the population boomed to 10,000 by the 1890 census, with many Anglo-Americans, recent immigrants, old Hispanic settlers, and recent arrivals from Mexico. The location of El Paso and the arrival of these wilder newcomers caused the city to become a violent and wild boomtown known as the "Six-shooter Capital" because of its lawlessness. Indeed, prostitution and gambling flourished until World War I when the Department of the Army pressured El Paso authorities to crack down on vice (thus "benefitting" vice in neighboring Ciudad Juárez). With the suppression of the vice trade and in consideration of the city's geographic position, the city continued into developing as a premier manufacturing, transportation, and retail center of the U.S. Southwest.
In 1909, the El Paso Chamber of Commerce hosted U.S. President William Howard Taft and Mexican President Porfirio Díaz at a planned summit in El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, a historic first meeting between the Presidents of the two countries, and also the first time an American President crossed the border into Mexico. However, tensions rose on both sides of the border, including threats of assassination; so the Texas Rangers, 4,000 U.S. and Mexican troops, U.S. Secret Service agents, FBI agents, and U.S. marshals were all called in to provide security. Frederick Russell Burnham, a celebrated scout, was put in charge of a 250-strong private security detail hired by John Hays Hammond, who in addition to owning large investments in Mexico, was a close friend of Taft from Yale and a U.S. vice presidential candidate in 1908. On October 16, the day of the summit, Burnham and Private C.R. Moore, a Texas Ranger, discovered a man holding a concealed palm pistol standing at the Chamber of Commerce building along the procession route in El Paso. Burnham and Moore captured, disarmed, and arrested the assassin within only a few feet of Taft and Díaz. By 1910, an overwhelming number of people in the city were Americans, creating a settled environment, but this period was short-lived as the Mexican Revolution greatly impacted the city, bringing an influx of refugees—and capital—to the bustling boom town. Spanish-language newspapers, theaters, movie houses, and schools were established, many supported by a thriving Mexican refugee middle class. Large numbers of clerics, intellectuals, and businessmen took refuge in the city, particularly between 1913 and 1915. Ultimately, the violence of the Mexican Revolution followed the large Mexican diaspora, who had fled to El Paso. In 1915 and again in 1916 and 1917, various Mexican revolutionary societies planned, staged, and launched violent attacks against both Texans and their political Mexican opponents in El Paso. This state of affairs eventually led to the vast Plan de San Diego, which resulted in the murder of 21 American citizens. The subsequent reprisals by a local militia soon caused an escalation of violence, wherein an estimated 300 Mexicans and Mexican-Americans lost their lives. These actions affected almost every resident of the entire Rio Grande Valley, resulting in millions of dollars of losses; the result of the Plan of San Diego was long-standing enmity between the two ethnic groups.
Simultaneously, other Texans and Americans gravitated to the city, and by 1920, along with the U.S. Army troops, the population exceeded 100,000, and non-Hispanic Whites once again were in the clear majority. Nonetheless, the city increased the segregation between Mexicans and Mexican-Americans with non-Hispanic Whites. One prominent form of segregation, in the form of immigration controls to prevent disease, allegedly was abused to create nonconsensual pornographic images of women distributed in local bars. These rumors along with the perceived hazard from kerosene baths led to the 1917 Bath riots. As a result of the increased segregation, the Catholic Church attempted to garner the Mexican-American community's allegiance through education and political and civic involvement organizations, including the National Catholic Welfare Fund. In 1916, the Census Bureau reported El Paso's population as 53% Mexican and 44% Non-Hispanic whites. Mining and other industries gradually developed in the area. The El Paso and Northeastern Railway was chartered in 1897, to help extract the natural resources of surrounding areas, especially in southeastern New Mexico Territory. The 1920s and 1930s had the emergence of major business development in the city, partially enabled by Prohibition-era bootlegging. The military demobilization, and agricultural economic depression, which hit places like El Paso first before the larger Great Depression was felt in the big cities, though, hit the city hard. In turn, as in the rest of the United States, the Depression era overall hit the city hard, and El Paso's population declined through the end of World War II, with most of the population losses coming from the non-Hispanic White community. Nonetheless, they remained the majority to the 1940s.
Text from the Wikipedia article “El Paso, Texas”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.