The Pass keeps its stories close. They'll tell you the name is literal — this really is the pass, the one gap where the river leaves the mountains. They'll point up at the star on the Franklins and out at the Mission Trail, where Ysleta has held services since the 1680s. They'll tell you El Paso runs on Mountain time while the rest of Texas runs on Central, because the Pass has always kept its own clock. And they'll tell you about the sun — that this is the Sun City, where the sky is clear almost every day of the year.
Long before any European arrived, Pueblo and desert peoples lived and traded along the Rio Grande at the Pass. In 1598 a Spanish expedition led by Juan de Onate reached the river and gave the crossing its lasting name — El Paso del Norte, the Pass of the North. The mission tradition followed: Fray Garcia de San Francisco founded the first mission of the Pass in 1659, and in 1682, after the Pueblo Revolt drove refugees and the Tigua south, the Ysleta and Socorro missions were built — the oldest in Texas, with Ysleta del Sur Pueblo recognized as the oldest town in the state. For four centuries the Pass was a crossroads on the Camino Real, the royal road of the Spanish Southwest.
Why People Visit El Paso Texas
People come to El Paso for the desert light and the layered history — the Pass of the North, the oldest mission in Texas, the star on the mountain — and for the mountains, the Mission Trail, and the bicultural energy of a Sun City that shares one valley with its neighbor across the river. It is sunny, spacious, and deep: four centuries of the Southwest at the Pass.
