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El
Paso is at the far western tip of Texas, where New Mexico and the
Mexican state of Chihuahua meet in a harsh desert environment around
the slopes of Mount Franklin on the Rio Grande, which has often been
compared to the Nile. As they approached the Rio Grande from the
south, Spaniards in the sixteenth century viewed two mountain ranges
rising out of the desert with a deep chasm between. This site they
named El Paso del Norte (the Pass of the North), the future location
of two border cities-Ciudad Juárez on the south bank of the Rio
Grande, and El Paso, Texas, on the opposite side of the river. Since
the sixteenth century the pass has been a continental crossroads; a
north-south route along a historic camino real prevailed during the
Spanish and Mexican periods, but traffic shifted to an east-west
axis in the years following 1848, when the Rio Grande became an
international boundary. The El Paso area was inhabited for centuries
by various Indian groups before the Spaniards came. The first
Europeans in all probability were Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and
his three companions, survivors of an unsuccessful Spanish
expedition to Florida, who passed through the El Paso area in 1535
or 1536, although their exact route is debated by historians.
Several years later, in 1540-42, an expedition under Francisco Vázquez
de Coronado explored an enormous amount of territory now known as
the American Southwest. The first party of Spaniards that certainly
saw the Pass of the North was the Rodríguez-Sánchez expedition of
1581; its arrival marked the beginning of 400 years of history in
the El Paso area. This was followed by the Espejo-Beltrán
expedition (see ESPEJO, ANTONIO DE) of 1582 and the historic
colonizing expedition under Juan de Oñate,
who, on April 30, 1598, in a ceremony at a site near that of
present San Elizario, took formal possession of the entire territory
drained by the Río del Norte (the Rio Grande). This act, called La
Toma, or "the claiming," brought Spanish civilization to
the Pass of the North and laid the foundations of more than two
centuries of Spanish rule over a vast area. In
the late 1650s Fray García founded the mission of Nuestra Señora
de Guadalupe on the south bank of the Rio Grande; it still stands in
downtown Ciudad Juárez. The Pueblo Indian Revolt of 1680 sent
Spanish colonists and Tigua Indians of New Mexico fleeing southward
to take refuge at the pass, transplanting the names of New Mexico
river pueblos, including La Isleta and Socorro, to the El Paso area.
On October 12, 1680, midway between the Spanish settlement of Santísimo
Sacramento and the Indian settlement of San Antonio, the first mass
in Texas was celebrated at a site near that of present Ysleta, which
was placed on what is now the Texas side by the shifting river in
1829; Ysleta thus has a claim to being the oldest town in Texas. By
1682 five settlements had been founded in a chain along the south
bank of the Rio Grande-El Paso del Norte, San Lorenzo, Senecú,
Ysleta, and Socorro. By
the middle of the eighteenth century about 5,000 people lived in the
El Paso area-Spaniards, mestizos (see MESTIZO) and Indians-the
largest complex of population on the Spanish northern frontier. A
large dam and a series of acequias (irrigation ditches) made
possible a flourishing agriculture. The large number of vineyards
produced wine and brandy said to have ranked with the best in the
realm. In 1789 the presidio of San Elizario was founded to help in
the defense of the El Paso settlements against the Apaches. With
the establishment of Mexican independence from Spain in 1821 (see
MEXICAN TEXAS), the El Paso area and what is now the American
Southwest became a part of the Mexican nation. Agriculture,
ranching, and commerce continued to flourish, but the Rio Grande
frequently overflowed its banks, causing great damage to fields,
crops, and adobe structures. In 1829 the unpredictable river flooded
much of the lower Rio Grande valley and formed a new channel that
ran south of the towns of Ysleta, Socorro, and San Elizario, thus
placing them on an island some twenty miles in length and two to
four miles in width. Of the various land grants made by the local
officials in El Paso del Norte, the best known and most successful
was given to Juan María Ponce De León, a Paseño aristocrat, in
what is now the downtown business district of El Paso, Texas. By
this time a number of Americans were engaged in the Chihuahua trade,
two of whom-James W. Magoffin and Hugh Stephenson-became El Paso
pioneers at a later date. After
the outbreak of hostilities between the United States and Mexico in
May 1846, Col. Alexander Doniphan and a force of American volunteers
defeated the Mexicans at the battle of Brazito, entered El Paso del
Norte, and invaded Chihuahua in December. The Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo (February 2, 1848), which officially ended the Mexican War,
fixed the boundary between the two nations at the Rio Grande, the
Gila River, and the Colorado River, thence westward to the Pacific.
All territory north of that line, known as the Mexican Cession and
comprising half of Mexico's national domain, became a part of the
United States, which paid Mexico $15 million. Thus El Paso del Norte,
the future Ciudad Juárez, became a border town. By
late 1849, aided by the gold rush to California, five settlements
had been founded along the northern bank of the Rio Grande they were
Frontera, El Molino, a mercantile store, Magoffinsville, and
Concordia. In addition, the three Mexican towns of Ysleta, Socorro,
and San Elizario were declared to be in the United States; thus by
1850 the bicultural, bilingual foundations of the future El Paso,
Texas, were clearly established. A
number of important developments during the 1850s shaped the
character of the area north of the river. A settlement on Coons'
Rancho called Franklin became the nucleus of El Paso, Texas. 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 thirty-second parallel, thus largely ignoring
history and topography. A military post called Fort Bliss was
established in 1854, and the Butterfield Overland Mail arrived in
1858. A year later pioneer Anson Mills completed his plat of the
town of El Paso, a name that resulted in endless confusion until the
name of the town across the river, El Paso del Norte, was changed to
Ciudad Juárez in 1888. During
the Civil War most of the El Paso pioneers were overwhelmingly
sympathetic to the South. Although Confederate forces occupied Fort
Bliss in 1861, the tide began to turn in favor of the Union cause
the following year, and in August the Stars and Stripes was raised
once again over Fort Bliss. The local Southern sympathizers
eventually received presidential pardons, but some, such as Simeon
Hart, battled for years before they recovered their properties. In
1877 the region had its own civil war, the Salt War of San Elizario,
a bloody racial conflict that had little to do with salt, but that
set Texan against Mexican, strong man against strong man, faction
against faction, and the United States against Mexico. Bad blood,
personality conflicts, and intense personal rivalries characterized
the affair, and mob violence, rape, robbery, and murder went
unpunished with the breakdown of law enforcement. At length Fort
Bliss, which had been shut down, was reestablished, and six months
of bloodshed was brought to a halt. Most
authorities agree that the arrival of the railroads in 1881 and 1882
was the single most significant event in El Paso history, as it
transformed a sleepy, dusty little adobe village of several hundred
inhabitants into a flourishing frontier community that became the
county seat in 1883 and reached a population of more than 10,000 by
1890. As El Paso became a western boomtown, it also became "Six
Shooter Capital" and "Sin City," where scores of
saloons, dance halls, gambling establishments, and houses of
prostitution lined the main streets. At first the city fathers
exploited the town's evil reputation by permitting vice for a price,
but in time the more farsighted began to insist that El Paso's
future might be in jeopardy if vice and crime were not brought under
a measure of control. In the 1890s reform-minded citizens conducted
a campaign to curb El Paso's most visible forms of vice and
lawlessness, and in 1905 the city finally enacted ordinances closing
houses of gambling and prostitution. After
1900 El Paso began to shed its frontier image and develop as a
modern municipality and significant industrial, commercial, and
transportation center. For
more than 130 years Fort Bliss has played a significant role in
local, national, and international affairs, and the relationship
between the city and the post has always been close. The military
establishment was responsible for much of El Paso's growth during
the 1940s and 1950s, when El Paso absorbed the town of Isleta and
greatly increased its municipal area. In 1986 military personnel
made up one-fourth of the city's population and accounted for one
out of every five dollars flowing through El Paso's economy. A
major characteristic of border-town El Paso is its special
relationship with Mexico in general and Ciudad Juárez in
particular. In 1983 El Paso-Juárez was the largest binational urban
area along the Mexican-American border. Historic developments such
as the Taft-Díaz meeting of
1909; the taking of Ciudad Juárez by the revolutionary forces of
Francisco I. Madero in 1911; the activities of Francisco (Pancho)
Villa, particularly the
raid on Columbus, New Mexico, followed by Gen. John J. Pershing's
Punitive Expedition of 1916; the immigration of Mexican
families, rich and poor, during and after the Mexican Revolution;
the smuggling and bootlegging activities during the Prohibition era;
the Chamizal dispute and
its settlement in 1964; and the growing interdependence of the two
cities-all attest to the unique relationship existing between El
Paso and Ciudad Juárez. Handbook
of Texas Online, s.v. "EL PASO, TX," |