Early El Paso Water Systems

The acequias the plaque mentions belonged to the oldest irrigation tradition in Texas. Spanish colonists brought canal-building skills practiced in Spain since the Moorish conquest, and the first acequias in Texas were dug near Ysleta after 1680 by Pueblo people under the direction of Spanish friars. Those ditches grew into a large network, parts of it still in use in the early 1990s. Acequias took heavy labor to dig and keep up. Water rights were tightly controlled and sometimes sold apart from the land, and landowners who failed to help maintain the canals could be fined.

What the plaque says

Early El Paso Water Systems El Pasoans initially obtained their domestic water from acequias, or open irrigation ditches, and later from the aguadores, water-carriers who delivered fresh water as depicted in the nearby mural. In 1882, Sylvester Watts built the first El Paso waterworks. He pumped water out of the Rio Grande and stored it in a reservoir at this site, then later dug a well near the river that became the main supply source. In 1910, the city purchased the waterworks and began major renovations to the system, including the construction of the pumping unit at this site and the expansion of the Sunset Heights reservoir. The El Paso Public Service Board was established in 1952 to oversee the city's water system. (2002)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Magoffin Home State Historic Site — 1.3 mi
  A U-shaped adobe of the 1870s in central El Paso that joins Mexican building to an Anglo plan, closed for restoration through 2027 while its visitor center stays open.
• Chamizal National Memorial — 2.5 mi
  A park on land the Rio Grande once put in dispute, where a century-old border quarrel between the United States and Mexico was settled by treaty and a new concrete channel.
• Ysleta Mission (Corpus Christi de la Ysleta del Sur) — 11 mi
  The Tigua mission church at Ysleta, rebuilt in 1908 around the walls, bell and Santo Entierro that came through fire, its interior painted with rain clouds and corn.
• Franklin Mountains State Park — 12 mi
  Almost 27,000 acres of desert mountains inside El Paso, with the oldest rocks in Texas, more than 100 miles of trail and campsites in the Tom Mays Unit.

More markers nearby

• Olga Kohlberg — steps away
• Sunset Heights — 0.3 mi
• The University of Texas at El Paso — 0.5 mi
• Old San Francisco Historic District — 0.5 mi