El Paso del Rio del Norte

Of the two desert ranges that give the pass its shape, the Franklin Mountains stand on the Texas side. They run about twenty-three miles from just north of downtown El Paso into New Mexico, roughly three miles wide, and rise to 7,192 feet at North Franklin Mountain. Geologists call them tilted-block fault mountains, raised 60 to 70 million years ago, and they hold billion-year-old Precambrian rock, the oldest in Texas. Early Spanish maps named them the Sierras de los Mansos, for the people living along the river, or the Sierras de los Organos, for cliffs shaped like organ pipes.

What the plaque says

El Paso del Rio del Norte Through this old pass, the lowest snow-free feasible route from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Rocky Mountains, extend today the great trunk lines of telegraph and railroad. The city of El Paso marks the place and perpetuates the name. 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Magoffin Home State Historic Site — 1.9 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 — 3.2 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) — 12 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

• Captain James W. Magoffin, Major Simeon Hart — steps away
• Sunset Heights — 0.5 mi
• The University of Texas at El Paso — 0.7 mi
• Olga Kohlberg — 0.9 mi