The Birth of a City: The Politics Leading to the Incorporation of the City of El Paso

While the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction-era focuses on the eastern United States, those events rippled across the country and affected the development of places far from the national capital and sites of the major battles. Most histories of El Paso, Texas focus on the era after the arrival of the railroad and growth of Fort Bliss as a major military installation. The region that now encompasses El Paso County, Texas experienced European migration centuries before the United States developed, and its Spanish and, later, Mexican background would impact how the area integrated with the United States. Texas broke away from Mexico, but the El Paso area would be conquered as part of the 1846-1848 War between the U.S. and Mexico. Enterprising individual American men moved to the area and married into wealthy families. The later division of El Paso Del Norte (Ciudad Juárez today) from the communities north of the Rio Bravo (Rio Grande) enabled the American men to leverage both their identities as American citizens and as members of successful Mexican families to build businesses and their own wealth in the area, which translated into becoming the area’s first power brokers. The Civil War would disrupt the system the early elites built and lead to decades of change as Unionists held power, and the Mexican American community navigated between the various factions in order to make decisions that best benefitted the majority population in this area. The location of the county seat and the incorporation of the American City of El Paso would play a major factor in how the families of the old elites regained power and cemented their hold on the area.