El Paso tourist information

El Paso was platted in 1859, but grew very slowly due to its remoteness. With the arrival of Southern Pacific railroads in 1881, the population boomed to 10,000 by 1890 census. With a tempting green valley and a nearly perfect climate year-around, the town attracted a constant stream of newcomers: gamblers, gunfighters, thieves, cattle and horse rustlers, murderers, priests, Chinese railroad laborers, prostitutes and followed of course, entrepreneurs.

The Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) began in 1910, and Ciudad Juárez was the focus of intense fighting. Occasionally, stray shots killed civilians on the El Paso side. El Paso became a center of intrigue as various exiled leaders including Victoriano Huerta and (for a time) Pancho Villa were seen in the city. General John Joseph Pershing was stationed at Fort Bliss, and mounted his ill fated expedition against Pancho Villa after the infamous raid on Columbus, New Mexico on March 9, 1916. The cavalry under Pershing were paid in gold, in competition with Pancho Villa, who offered $50 per machine gun. (When World War I began, Pershing's cavalry had to remain in the Army for the duration of the war, and were no longer paid in gold.)

After World War II, Werner von Braun and other German rocket scientists were brought to Fort Bliss in El Paso, along with many of the V2 rockets and rocket parts, starting the American rocket program; they were later moved to Huntsville, Alabama. One V2 rocket is still on display at Fort Bliss.

From World War II until the 1980s, El Paso boomed into a sprawling city. The expansion of Fort Bliss from a frontier post to a major Cold War military center brought in thousands of soldiers, dependents, and retirees. The industrial economy was dominated by copper smelting, oil refining, and the proliferation of low wage industries (particularly garment making), which drew thousands of Mexican immigrants. New housing subdivisions were built, expanding El Paso far to the west, northeast and east of its original core areas.

Since 1990, the local economy has been adversely affected by competition with low wage labor abroad, and the closure of the main copper smelter due to fluctuant metal prices, and excessive lead contamination found throughout many of the surrounding areas. The passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement has been a mixed blessing, with local transport, retail, and service firms expanding, but with the accelerated loss of many industrial jobs. El Paso is very sensitive to changes in the Mexican economy and the regulation of cross border traffic; the Mexican peso devaluation of late 1994 and the temporary closing of the ports of entry and subsequent stringent controls of cross border traffic after the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack were felt strongly in El Paso.