El Paso & Southwestern Railroad Locomotive Number One

From 1960 until 2000 the engine stood outside the El Paso Centennial Museum on the campus of what became the University of Texas at El Paso. The museum was one of several founded across Texas in 1936 for the Texas Centennial. Its exhibits still cover the human and natural history of El Paso, the Southwest and northern Mexico, from tools and baskets left by prehistoric cave dwellers to Casas Grandes pottery and colonial Spanish ironwork.

What the plaque says

El Paso & Southwestern Railroad Locomotive Number One One of the oldest survivors of America's steam railroading era, this locomotive was built 29 years after the steam engine was first developed for transportation. Breese, Kneeland & Company of Jersey City, New Jersey also operated as the New York Locomotive Works and is represented by the No. 73 on the locomotive builders plate. The company used its standard style, based on a design patented by Henry Roe Campbell in 1836. Known as a 4-4-0 "Classic American" for its wheel configuration, this particular locomotive was manufactured in 1857 for the Milwaukee & Mississippi Railroad Company. Believed to have been named Spring Green, the locomotive served the upper midwestern United States for more than 30 years. By 1889, the Arizona & Southeastern Railroad Company, which later became the El Paso & Southwestern Railroad (EP&SW), had acquired it and converted it from a wood-burner to a coal-burner. The smokestack was also likely reconfigured from a funnel type to a straight type at that time. Calling it Locomotive No. One, EP&SW utilized it in the development of Bisbee, Arizona and in other mining and industrial operations of the Southwest. EP&SW retired Old Number One after more than 50 years of service, moving it to a park adjacent to company headquarters at 416 N. Stanton Street in 1909. Except for its brief role in the 1938 film Let Freedom Ring, it remained there until 1960, even after the rail company became part of the Southern Pacific Railroad system in 1924. In 1960, the railroad donated it it Texas Western College (now The University of Texas at El Paso), which placed it at the Centennial Museum. In 2000, the City of El Paso received state and national funds to restore the engine to its 1909 appearance, moving it to the present site at El Paso's Union Plaza Transit Terminal. (1968, 2005)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Magoffin Home State Historic Site — 1.0 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 — 2.3 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.
• Tigua Indian Cultural Center, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo — 11 mi
  The cultural center of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, the Tigua nation that has lived in the Mission Valley of El Paso since 1682 and keeps its own history here.

More markers nearby

• Bataan Memorial Trainway — steps away
• Hotel Paso Del Norte — 0.2 mi
• Felix Martinez — 0.2 mi
• This Block was the Site of the Stage Station — 0.2 mi