El Paso is the sixth largest city in Texas and the county seat
of El Paso County. The US Census Bureau ranks El Paso 19th in
the list of major cities in the United States. The commercial,
university, and garrison town in far western Texas on the border
of New Mexico and Mexico had a population of 678,815 as of the
2020 census.
Together with the surrounding communities
and its Mexican sister city of Ciudad Juárez on the southern
bank of the Rio Grande with around 1.3 million inhabitants, it
forms a metropolitan complex with around 2.0 million
inhabitants.
El Paso is the seat of the Diocese of El
Paso.
El Paso is located 1078 km northwest of Houston, 909 km southwest of Dallas and 1142 km south of Denver on the southernmost foothills of the Rocky Mountains - the Franklin Mountains. The city is located in the westernmost tip of Texas and thus on the borders with Mexico and the US state of New Mexico. The Rio Grande flows around El Paso from the north-northwest on the south and south-east sides and forms the border between the United States and the Mexican state of Chihuahua here and further on.
Located in the heart of the Chihuahuan Desert's hot, dry climate, El
Paso enjoys hot summers with little rainfall and mild winters. The
maximum temperatures reach around 40 °C in the high summer period in
June and July. The historical maximum temperature was reached in 1995
with 45.5 °C.
From July to September, the city has a persistent
weather period in which significant amounts of rain can fall due to
frequent, sometimes violent summer thunderstorms. This is also the time
when the city records most of its annual average rainfall of around
220mm.
The winter period is relatively mild with temperatures
rarely falling below freezing. Snow is rarely observed, but heavy
snowfalls have been recorded in the past, which usually leads to
sometimes significant disruptions in the city.
Apart from the
high temperatures in summer, extreme weather phenomena such as tornadoes
are almost unknown in the area. However, El Paso is occasionally
affected by local flooding in individual parts of the city when it rains
heavily. This was remedied by building appropriate rainwater retention
basins and drainage channels. Due to the desert-like conditions (sparse
ground cover with short shrub growth, lack of water due to little
precipitation) outside the populated areas, isolated dust and sand
storms can easily occur at higher wind speeds.
Overall, El Paso's
climate is generally considered pleasant by residents and visitors
alike. The city records an average of 302 days of sunshine a year,
giving El Paso its nickname "Sun City."
Hispanics make up the majority of El Paso's population at over 70%.
As in much of the Southwest United States (and Florida), a US-wide
ethnic minority makes up the majority of the population here.
Bilingualism is an important recruitment criterion in many areas of
business and administration.
The city is currently experiencing
rapid population growth due to economic development, its location as a
hub for goods and people on the border with Mexico, and the expansion of
the Fort Bliss military base and Biggs Army Airfield. ¹ to 2010: census
results
Archaeological finds in the area of present-day El Paso indicate that
the area was inhabited for thousands of years. The first Spanish
explorers found settlements of native Indian tribes in the region. Over
time, these assimilated with the new settlers or merged with the nomadic
Apache tribes of the surrounding area. In contemporary populations,
these origins can be found in the mestizo populations of the
Southwestern United States and Mexico.
In the late 1650's,
Spanish missionaries built the Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe Mission on
the south bank of the Rio Bravo del Norte (now the Rio Grande) roughly
where present-day Ciudad Juárez is located. It still exists today in the
center of modern Ciudad Juárez. In 1659, Spanish conquerors founded the
town of El Paso del Norte (Spanish: Pass of the North) at this point. At
that time, a fertile grass steppe stretched on both sides of the river
and agriculture brought bountiful harvests of fruit, vegetables and even
wine for the settlers there. Trade and settlement attempts to the north
beyond the river often failed due to the resistance of the local tribes.
In return, however, the river offered good protection against raids by
the Indians.
Relatively remote, the area around El Paso del Norte
was rarely the destination of travelers from central Mexico. Only
merchants and official government envoys made the journey from Mexico
City, which often lasted several months. Nevertheless, the early
settlement represented an important outpost on the Rio Bravo. El Camino
Real de Tierra Adentro (the "royal road") led from Mexico City via El
Paso del Norte to Santa Fe in the northern part of the Mexican province
of Nuevo México (now the US state of New Mexico).
A revolt by the
Indian tribes in 1680 decimated the Spanish colonies in the north of the
Provincia Nuevo México. Subsequently, El Paso del Norte became the
linchpin of Spanish rule over territory north of the Rio Bravo. From
here the Spanish settlement movement under Diego de Vargas started
again. In the same year, Spanish Franciscans founded the Ysleta Mission,
which still exists today, in the settlement area of the Tigua Indians.
This settlement is thus possibly Texas' oldest settlement and is the
nucleus of today's modern El Paso.
Although American surveyors, traders and trappers had been drawn to
the area from the north since 1804, it was not until after the
Mexican-American War of 1849 that there were significant and permanent
settlements.
Although there were hardly any major combat
operations in the course of the war, the situation affected settlement
and agricultural production. A major shift in the course of the Rio
Bravo resulted in the relocation of the settlements of Ysleta, Socorro,
and San Elizario to the US side of the river.
The dominance of
the Merchants of the State of Chihuahua over the Province of Nuevo
México resulted in the drafting of the Mexican Constitution of 1824 that
El Paso del Norte was incorporated into the State of Chihuahua after 200
years of belonging to that province. The town's residents held their
first municipal elections a year later (1825) - the first school was
opened in 1829.
The Texas Revolution of 1836 had no impact on the area; until 1848 it was not considered part of the state of Texas. Given the Republic of Texas' unclear claims to parts of the Santa Fe trade, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ensured that the previous settlements on the north side of the river came under American sovereignty and thus completed their separation from the previous El Paso del Norte on the Mexican side became.
The Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach and mail rider line extended service to the area in 1858. A settlement on Coons' ranch named Franklin became the nucleus of today's El Paso, Texas. A year later, land developer and General Anson Mills completed his zoning plan for the city of El Paso—choosing a name for the township that, for nearly 40 years, led to ongoing misunderstandings and confusion with the city of the same name on the south bank of the river. This situation only ended in 1888 when "El Paso del Norte" changed its name to "Ciudad Juárez".
Several important developments affected the area north of the Rio Bravo after 1850. In March 1850, El Paso County was established at its first seat in Elizario. The US Senate, largely disregarding historical and topographical facts, established the 32nd parallel as the border between Texas and New Mexico. In 1854 a military camp called The Post opposite El Paso was established. During the Civil War, most of the southern states, including Texas, seceded from the rest of the Union and formed the Confederate States of America in 1861. Fort Bliss, as the army post was now known, and the other Confederate Army garrisons along the Rio Grande were important bases for the Confederate states to secure their claim to New Mexico territory. These Southern goals found strong support among the people of El Paso. After the civil war ended in 1865, the population began to grow. The seat of El Paso County changed in 1877 from Elizario to Ysleta in the immediate vicinity of El Paso.
When in 1881, through the construction of railway lines, among others by the companies Southern Pacific Railroad, Texas Railroad and Santa Fe Railroad, the hitherto small patch on the Rio Grande was connected to the larger cities, El Paso began to grow and reached the number for the 1890 census of 10,000 inhabitants. The city's fertile green river valley and year-round climate quickly attracted many newcomers, including cowboys, priests, Chinese railroad workers and small business owners, as well as gamblers, gunslingers, thieves, murderers, crooks and prostitutes. During the ensuing "Old West" era, El Paso earned the evocative and dubious nickname of the "Six Shooter Capital" for its remoteness and lawlessness.
In 1883, the seat of El Paso County was permanently moved from Ysleta
to El Paso, where it remains today. This decision was dubious when, in a
dubious referendum, there were more than three times as many ballot
papers in the polls as there were registered voters. Nevertheless, the
vote was judged valid and the ballot papers were counted.
Prostitution and gambling continued to thrive in the city until the
start of World War I, under pressure from the US Army, local authorities
put a stop to it. The measures led to the relocation of these
undesirable trades to neighboring Ciudad Juárez, bringing hefty revenues
to the bars and entertainment establishments on Mexico's south side,
especially during the latter days of alcohol prohibition.
The Golden Twenties brought further upswing for the city. The founder of the Hilton hotel empire, Conrad Hilton, built his first hotel in El Paso in 1930, today's Plaza Hotel. Several large entrepreneurs set the cornerstones for the long-lasting good economic development of the city.
After the end of the Second World War, the US Army, together with the
rocket designers led by Wernher von Braun, first took the design
documents and parts of the German rocket program they had seized to El
Paso and then took them on to Huntsville in the state of Alabama, where
they began work on the US -should decisively advance the American
missile and space program. A V2 rocket is on display in the Fort Bliss
Rocket Museum today, along with many other exhibits.
The Chamizal
Treaty on Border Settlement
In 1963, the United States and Mexico
concluded a border agreement, the so-called Chamizal Treaty, in which an
area of El Paso that had long been disputed due to changes in the course
of the Rio Grande was ceded to Mexico. The riverbed of the Rio Grande
was paved and the middle of the river later established as the border
between the United States and Mexico. An island formerly formed by the
Rio Grande was redeveloped and the area affected by the border
regulation was declared a national park. Today, the site on the north
side is one of El Paso's largest parks; the part located on the Mexican
side in the territory of Ciudad Juárez is called Chamizal Park.
Until the 1980s, El Paso developed at a rapid pace. Fort Bliss lost
its former position as a frontier post and became one of the great
military centers of the Cold War. This brought thousands of soldiers,
civilian employees, family members and army retirees to the city.
The dominant industries included a copper smelter (ASARCO), several
oil refineries, and numerous low-wage industries, such as textile
processing, which specifically led to the immigration of thousands of
Mexican workers. El Paso expanded with the construction of new
neighborhoods, particularly to the northwest, north, and east of the old
core city.
Since 1990 the city has experienced a negative economic development.
The main reasons for this were the actual or threatened migration of
companies to low-wage countries, the closure of the copper works due to
falling world market prices and increasing environmental pollution from
lead emissions in the surrounding area. The introduction of the North
American free trade agreement NAFTA in 1994 led to further job losses
despite growth in the areas of transport, retail and the service sector.
The city's economy has traditionally been sensitive to changes in
Mexico's economy and relies heavily on shared cross-border
transportation. Other reasons were the devaluation of the Mexican peso
in 1994 and the tightened border controls after September 11, 2001.
El Paso is currently experiencing a resurgence. Numerous
construction projects in the city, including major road construction
projects, the expansion of Fort Bliss and Biggs Army Airfield are
currently stimulating the local economy. The forthcoming expansion of
both military complexes will also bring a significant increase in the
population, the importance of which for the local economy is estimated
at hundreds of millions a year.
In the attack in El Paso in early
August 2019, a suspected racially motivated assassin carried out a
terrorist attack on a shopping center in the city, killing 22 people and
injuring 26.
The city has 51 structures and sites on the National
Register of Historic Places (NRHP) as of March 7, 2020.
The El Paso metro area had a gross domestic product of $43.9 billion
in 2016, ranking 90th among the metropolitan areas of the United States.
The unemployment rate in the metro area was 4.1 percent, slightly above
the national average of 3.8 percent. (Status: March 2018).
El
Paso is home to more than 70 Fortune 500 companies, including Hoover,
Eureka, Boeing and auto parts supplier Delphi. The Raytheon group should
be mentioned as an important armaments company; he primarily develops
missile systems for the US Army. El Paso is the headquarters of Western
Refining, which is a New York Stock Exchange listed petroleum refiner.
El Paso is a major border crossing point for goods, people, and
services between the United States and Mexico. As a former location for
the copper-producing industry, the city now has several economic
pillars. In addition to the remaining crude oil processing by
refineries, these include above all plastics production, the textile,
armaments and electronics industries and agriculture. In the fertile
lowlands of the Upper and Lower Valleys along the Rio Grande, fruit,
vegetables, cotton and extensive walnut plantations thrive. Milk and
meat production is another important factor in local agriculture.
El Paso Independent School District 8,663
Fort Bliss (civilian
workers) 6,803
Ysleta Independent School District 6,500
City of El
Paso 6,264
University of Texas at El Paso 4.871
Socorro
Independent School District 3,995
Sierra Providence Health Network
3.761
El Paso Community College 3,728
Walmart 3,706
El Paso
County 2,700
Las Palmas and Del Sol Regional Health Care System 2.244
EchoStar 2.012
The city is connected by the major west-east Interstate 10 (Los
Angeles-New Orleans-Jacksonville (Florida)), which runs in part near the
border with Mexico, and to the north via Las Cruces, New Mexico
Interstate 25 going to Buffalo (Wyoming) is conveniently connected to
the US highway network.
El Paso is connected to the rail network
by several routes as a railway junction, which means that freight
traffic uses the city as an important transhipment point. Passenger
transport by rail, on the other hand, only plays a subordinate role.
The sister city of Ciudad Juárez in Mexico can be reached via three
road crossings and one rail crossing. Pedestrian traffic, which is very
important for the economy of both cities, is handled via the road
bridges.
With the El Paso International Airport, the city has an
important commercial airport for the Southwest of the USA. Some of the
major US airlines fly to El Paso, including Southwest Airlines, Delta
Air Lines, and Continental Airlines. In addition, Federal Express
(FedEx) uses the airport as an air cargo hub.
Located just north
of the airport, Biggs Army Airfield has one of the longest runways in
the United States at 4,131 m.
Since November 9, 2018, a tram has
been operating in El Paso again.
Education in El Paso is overseen by three school districts, which
operate numerous elementary, middle and high schools.
With
approximately 20,000 students, 72% of whom are Hispanics, the University
of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) has the largest Mexican-American student body
in the United States. Far beyond the borders of El Paso, it is of great
importance for the acquisition of a university degree for Hispanics in
the Southwest of the United States. The focal points of the educational
offer at UTEP are engineering and economics, fine arts, health care and
educational sciences. Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El
Paso Campus is a division of Texas Tech University Health Sciences
Center, established in 1969.
El Paso Community College offers a
variety of professional degrees.
Fort Bliss
Fort Bliss is the largest air defense center in the
world with its Air Defense Artillery School and the associated military
training area with a size of 440,000 hectares. A total of around 25,000
US Army soldiers are stationed in the extensive barracks area, which
borders the city of El Paso in the northeast and is the size of a small
town. As part of a restructuring and deployment decision by the US
Congress (BRAC), a further 20,000 soldiers are to be transferred over
the next few years. This is mainly the 1st Armored Division of the US
Army, which was previously based in Germany (Wiesbaden) and Fort Riley
in Kansas. With civilian personnel and family members, the influx will
reach around 50,000 people. In return, Fort Bliss will transfer its
anti-aircraft capabilities, including several Patriot anti-aircraft
missile units, to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. However, the bottom line will be
a tremendous increase in troop levels at the Fort Bliss location and in
the population of El Paso.
The German Air Force Command USA and
Canada and the Air Force Tactical Training Center for Anti-Aircraft
Missiles, a foreign agency subordinate to the Air Force Support Units
Command, were located in Fort Bliss, El Paso. The training of German
soldiers on the Patriot anti-aircraft missile system was carried out
here. Some of the training was moved to Oklahoma along with the
Americans' training. The German troop strength on site (regular soldiers
and course participants) was about 600 men.
The city is the site of the annual Sun Bowl, one of the numerous
American football games of the NCAA, the umbrella organization for US
university sports. The game will take place at Sun Bowl Stadium on the
University of Texas at El Paso campus.
Since 2014, El Paso has
been home to the minor league baseball team El Paso Chihuahuas, who play
their games at Southwest University Park.
The El Paso Marathon
has been held annually since 2007.
Guy Kibbee (1882–1956), film and stage actor
Werner Vermehren
(1890–1986), German naval officer
A. Arnold Gillespie (1899–1978),
special effects expert and art director
Alexander Brunschwig
(1901–1969), physician, pathologist and cancer researcher
Irene Ryan
(1902–1973), actress
Jim Wynn (1912–1977), R&B musician
Howard
Schwartz (1919–1990), cinematographer
Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991),
screenwriter, television and film producer, and creator of Star Trek
Paul Moor (1924–2010), German writer, photographer and music critic
Carlos Rivas (1925–2003), American actor
Margaret Varner (born 1927),
badminton, tennis, squash player
Sandra Day O'Connor (born 1930),
lawyer
John Rechy (born 1931), writer
Debbie Reynolds (1932–2016),
actress and singer
Norma G. Hernandez (born 1934), mathematician and
college professor
Jerry M. Patterson (born 1934), politician
Oscar
Zeta Acosta (1935–1974), lawyer, writer, politician and activist
Don
Bluth (born 1937), director, producer and screenwriter
Jimmy Carl
Black (1938–2008), drummer and singer
Jack Watson (born 1938), lawyer
and politician
Phil Ochs (1940–1976), songwriter
Vikki Carr (born
1941), singer
Lupe Ontiveros (1942–2012), actress
Jeff Bingaman
(born 1943), Senator
Eloise Klein Healy (born 1943), writer
Barbara Lee (born 1946), politician
Jesús Salvador Treviño (born
1946), film director and screenwriter
Teunisse Virginia Breese
(1947–2002), artist
Thomas Rosales Jr. (born 1948), actor and
stuntman
Chavo Guerrero Sr. (1949–2017), wrestler
Judith Ivey
(born 1951), actress
Louis Caldera (born 1956), politician
David
A. Warburton (born 1956), archaeologist and Egyptologist
Patrick
Graham Forrester (born 1957), astronaut
Susana Martinez (born 1959),
politician and lawyer
Stefen Fangmeier (born 1960), film director and
visual effects artist
Richard Ramírez (1960–2013), serial killer
John Cameron Mitchell (born 1963), writer, director and actor
Ross
Puritty (born 1966), boxer
Eddie Guerrero (1967–2005), wrestler
Vickie Guerrero (born 1968), wrestling actress
Veronica Escobar (born
1969), politician
Shawne Fielding (born 1969), fashion model
Paul
Ray Smith (1969–2003), US Army Sergeant First Class
Chavo Guerrero
(born 1970), professional wrestler
Alan Tudyk (born 1971), theater
and film actor
Andrew Jimenez (born 1972), screenwriter, director and
animator
Lombardo Boyar (born 1973), actor
A. Lee Martinez (born
1973), fantasy and science fiction writer
John Moyer (born 1973),
bassist
David Krummenacker (born 1975), track and field athlete
Andre Franke (born 1978), German-American geneticist and university
lecturer
Nora Zehetner (born 1981), actress
Justin Peach (born
1982), German-American documentary filmmaker and cameraman
Regina
Saldivar (born 1985), actress
Jordan Hinson (born 1991), actress
Melissa González (born 1994), Colombian track and field athlete
Marcell Jacobs (born 1994), Italian track and field athlete
Santiago
Muñoz (born 2002), soccer player
Ricardo Pepi (born 2003), soccer
player
Fabian Ziems (born 2009), German child actor