El Paso County Texas map
31.77° N · 106.24° W · County seat: El Paso · 1,015 sq mi · Mountain Time
El Paso County is the westernmost county in Texas and the only metropolitan one for 250 miles in any direction: 865,657 residents in 2020, tenth-largest in the state. It runs on Mountain Time, one of only two Texas counties that do, and it touches two states and one foreign country.
The Rio Grande cuts diagonally across the map; Ciudad Juárez lies on the far bank. The Franklin Mountains are the ridge splitting the city in two.
Where El Paso County is
The county sits at the far western tip of Texas where the Rio Grande turns from a north–south river into the international boundary. Doña Ana County, New Mexico is northwest and Otero County, New Mexico northeast; the state line runs straight across the top. The only Texas neighbour is Hudspeth County to the southeast. South and southwest, across the river, is the Mexican state of Chihuahua and the city of Ciudad Juárez.
That isolation is the defining fact of the place. Odessa is 228 miles east in a straight line and Midland 245 miles northeast; Alpine is 181 miles southeast. Las Cruces and Albuquerque, in New Mexico, are closer than any comparable Texas city. At 865,657 people over 1,015 square miles the county averages about 850 residents per square mile, which is denser than most of urban Texas and a strange thing to find in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert.
The county dates to 1850, when it was organised out of territory claimed from Santa Fe County, and county government was formally organised in 1871. The name comes from El Paso del Norte, the gap the Rio Grande cuts between the Franklin and Juárez mountains, which is the reason a settlement exists here at all.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | 2020 population |
|---|---|---|
| El Paso | City (county seat) | 678,815 |
| Socorro | City | 34,301 |
| Horizon City | City | 22,488 |
| San Elizario | City | 10,116 |
| Anthony | Town | 4,532 |
| Vinton | Village | 1,832 |
| Clint | Town | 932 |
Socorro, San Elizario and Ysleta — the last now inside El Paso city limits — form the Mission Trail along the old floodplain southeast of downtown, the string of Spanish colonial settlements founded in the 1680s after the Pueblo Revolt drove refugees south. Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, the Tigua community there, is the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in Texas. Anthony straddles the state line and has a New Mexico twin of the same name; Horizon City, out on the eastern mesa, is the fastest-growing place in the county.
Freeways and highways
- I-10 – enters from New Mexico at the northwest, bends through downtown along the river, then runs southeast past the Zaragoza bridge and out toward Van Horn.
- US-54 (Patriot Freeway) – north from I-10 downtown, through Fort Bliss and up the Tularosa Basin to Alamogordo, New Mexico.
- US-62/180 – east from the city past Hueco Tanks toward the Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad.
- Loop 375 – the ring road: the Border Highway along the Rio Grande on the south side, the Transmountain Road over the Franklins in the middle, and the eastern extension out past Horizon City.
The border crossings
Five ports of entry cross the river within the county. The Paso del Norte bridge and the Good Neighbour (Stanton Street) bridge run into central Ciudad Juárez from downtown El Paso and are largely for cars and pedestrians. The Bridge of the Americas, at the Chamizal, is toll-free and carries the heaviest mix of traffic. The Ysleta–Zaragoza crossing to the southeast handles most of the commercial trucking. Furthest downriver, the Tornillo–Guadalupe bridge opened in 2016 to take freight away from the urban crossings. Together they make this one of the busiest land border corridors on the U.S.–Mexico line.
Fort Bliss and the Franklin Mountains
Fort Bliss occupies the northeast quadrant of the county and continues far into New Mexico, making it one of the largest U.S. Army installations by land area; the 1st Armored Division is headquartered there, and the post's ranges reach up into the Tularosa Basin. William Beaumont Army Medical Center and Biggs Army Airfield are part of the same complex.
The Franklin Mountains run north–south through the middle of the city, splitting it into a west side and an east side joined by the Transmountain Road. North Franklin Peak reaches 7,192 feet. Franklin Mountains State Park protects most of the range and is one of the largest urban parks in the United States, with trailheads reachable from residential streets. East of the range, Hueco Tanks State Park and Historic Site preserves rock basins and thousands of pictographs in a granite outcrop on the desert floor.