The Handbook of Texas is free-to-use thanks to the support of readers like you. Support the Handbook today. No thank you, I am not interested in joining. 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.
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 , when the Rio Grande became an international boundary.
The El Paso area was inhabited for centuries by various Indian groups before the Spaniards came. 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. 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 the presidio of San Elizario was founded to help in the defense of the El Paso settlements against the Apaches.
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 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.
