| |
EL PASO
HISTORY
El
Paso County, West Texas
|
History
in a Pecan Shell
The History and Culture of El Paso go back to 1598 and earlier.
El Paso and Ciudad Juarez are the largest border cities on
the Texas/ Mexico border. The battles fought for control of Juarez
during the Mexican Revolution were observed with great interest by
El Pasoans who stood on freight cars to watch. The story is told that
the victorious Francisco "Pancho" Villa (after accepting the
surrender of the Federal troops) invited the defeated General to dinner
in El Paso. The defeated general accepted, but they started fighting
again - this time over who would pay the check.
The El Paso of the 1870s and 80s also provided many chapters (many
of them final chapters) in the lives of some of the most well-known
Texas gunfighters. Dallas Stoudenmire, John Wesley Hardin,
his assassin John Selman and Bass Outlaw to mention
a few. J. W. Hardin is buried in El Paso's Concordia Cemetery.
El
Paso Hotels >
Book Your Hotel Here & Save |
|
|
El
Paso aerial view
Old postcards |
El Paso
Texas History
Sal
del Rey by Delbert Trew
"This historic old salt lake... has been providing 99 2/5 percent
pure salt since before America was discovered. It covers about 640
acres...
more "
Border
Patrol Shootout on the Rio Grande El Paso (1916)
from "Border Patrol: With the U.S. Immigration Service on the
Mexican Boundary 1910-54" by Clifford Alan Perkins
1918
Flu
by Mike Cox ("Texas Tales" column)
" In El Paso, east-west railroad traffic and the routine
rotation of troops at Fort Bliss carried the disease to the Southwestern
desert, an area generally noted for its healthfulness. On September
30, 1918, El Paso papers casually noted that some people in the
city had the flu, but the situation worsened daily.... more"
Storm
of 1895 by Mike Cox ("Texas Tales" column)
"... In a good year, which is to say an average year, the city
at the Pass of the North enjoys only nine inches of rain. But in
the spring of 1895, what fell from the sky was dust...
more
"
Bombsite
by Mike Cox ("Texas
Tales" column)
July 16, 1945 saw three dawns.
At 5:29.45 a.m. Mountain War Time, scientists detonated the world’s
first atomic bomb 171 miles north of El Paso at a site on the Alamogordo
Bombing and Gunnery Range in New Mexico.
The
Lady in Blue by Bob Bowman ("All Things Historical"
column)
El
Paso Hotels >
Book Your Hotel Here & Save
|
El Paso
Texas Forum
Nacogdoches
claims to be the oldest town in Texas, using 1716 as the date. Now,
the Dallas Morning News Texas Almanac and the Univ Texas Handbook
of Texas, on line, say it t'aint so. They say Ysleta and Socorro
of ElPaso were est. ~ 1680-2, which is an earlier date even
using public school math. I suspect there's some 'school pride'
in this Nacogdoches-ites claim, but is there a real, non-tall-tale
truth for claiming to be the oldest? Or maybe Mr.
Bowman has this covered somewhere? - J R Overton, May 04,
2004
You don't know
how glad I was to find this article...thanks so much. It is really
a great piece of history right in our backyard. - Joshua, 19/Jun/2002
On cemeteries,
a mention of Concordia cemetery in El Paso would be appropriate.
From the Chinese section to the poorest graves marked only by a
cross made from two pieces of rebar, a very strong feeling of the
past is evoked, despite (or maybe because of) its change into an
urban setting with adjacent freeway overpasses. ... Best wishes.
- Chris Abbott.
El
Paso Hotels >
Book Your Hotel Here & Save
|
|
|
