The Pass of the North — where the Rio Grande marks the US-Mexico border so tightly that El Paso and Ciudad Juárez share one binational metro area of 2.7 million across a river you can walk across in five minutes, the Franklin Mountains State Park rises 7,192 feet inside city limits to make it the largest urban wilderness park in the United States, the Wyler Aerial Tramway ascends the Franklins to give views of three US states and two countries, and the El Paso Mission Trail preserves three Spanish colonial missions founded in 1659 that predate the founding of the USA by over a century
El Paso (700,000; metro 870,000; binational metro including Ciudad Juárez 2.7 million) is a major American city on the US-Mexico border at the western tip of Texas — geographically and culturally more connected to the American Southwest and northern Mexico than to the American South, separated from the next nearest Texas city (San Antonio) by 550 km of desert. The city's population is 80% Hispanic (one of the highest proportions of any major US city), and El Paso and Ciudad Juárez across the Rio Grande share a daily commuter population, a regional identity, and a culinary tradition that treat…
The Piro, Manso, and Suma peoples inhabited the Rio Grande valley at the Pass of the North for thousands of years before Spanish contact — the 'Pass' (El Paso) refers to the natural opening in the mountain ranges that made this one of the few crossings of the Rio Grande and the Chihuahuan Desert passable for north-south travel. Father García de San Francisco founded the Mission Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (today in Ciudad Juárez) in 1659 — making the El Paso area one of the longest continuously occupied European settlements in the American Southwest. The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro (Royal R…