El Paso wears its Wild West railroad past on its sleeve, but underneath that is far older, deeper human history, and it's worth knowing as you drive, because it shapes the soul of the place. Long before Texas, before the United States, this pass was home to Native peoples for thousands of years. And one of them is still very much here: down on the east side of the city stands Ysleta Mission, founded back in sixteen eighty-two, the oldest mission and one of the oldest continuously-active parishes in all of Texas — and it's the heart of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, the Tigua people, a living, sovereign Native community who have kept their identity here for well over three centuries. When the great Pueblo Revolt drove the Spanish out of New Mexico in 1680, some Native families came south to this pass, and their descendants are your neighbors here today.
Then came the long Spanish and Mexican centuries — this was Mexico, remember, until the border moved in the eighteen-hundreds, and the deep Mexican heritage of this place isn't across the river, it IS this place, in the food and the language and the families on both sides. And there are harder chapters, too, that an honest tour should name. For over a century a great copper smelter operated here, its tall smokestacks a landmark — but it left a bitter legacy in a neighborhood called Smeltertown, where the lead from the smelter poisoned children, a wrong the community is still reckoning with. This is a place of many layers, old and new, proud and painful — Native and Spanish and Mexican and American, all pressed together at the pass. Drive it knowing you're on ground that has been loved and fought over and lived in for a very, very long time. Roll on.
Photo: James Reyes · CC BY 3.0
