El Paso

El Paso is a border city on the Rio Grande in far western Texas, situated across the international boundary from Ciudad Juárez. The Spanish name refers to the historical mountain pass that linked trade routes between central Mexico and Santa Fe. The Sun Bowl college football game takes place in the Franklin Mountains each December.

Spanish Franciscan friars established a mission settlement on the river valley in 1659. Control of the northern bank passed to the United States following the Mexican-American War, and the settlement incorporated as a town in 1873. Four major transcontinental railroads arrived during the 1880s, turning the desert crossing into a commercial transfer point between the southern plains and Pacific harbors. Smelting furnaces, cattle yards, and rail maintenance shops expanded through the late 19th century, and commerce across the border prompted steady growth. The community was designated the seat of El Paso County during that railway expansion period.

Helen of Troy designs and distributes consumer products, supplying OXO kitchen utensils, Vicks humidifiers, and insulated Hydro Flask beverage containers. Lucchese Boot Company crafts leather western boots, cutting and assembling footwear from cowhide, calfskin, and exotic reptile skins in its local plant. Marathon Petroleum processes regional crude oil into motor gasoline, asphalt, and aviation fuels across two industrial refining installations on the east side. Hunt Companies directs real estate and civil construction investments, financing military family communities, educational buildings, and infrastructure projects across the region.

The University of Texas at El Paso features academic buildings modeled on Bhutanese dzong fortress architecture, a design adopted after a campus fire in the 1910s. The Plaza Theatre presents orchestral performances, touring Broadway stage productions, and Mexican musical concerts beneath an atmospheric Spanish Revival ceiling with painted stars. Franklin Mountains State Park protects high desert canyons and provides rocky habitats for golden eagles, ringtails, and desert bighorn sheep. The El Paso Museum of Art displays permanent galleries of European Renaissance masterworks, Spanish colonial devotional paintings, and early 20th-century Southwestern watercolors.