Paisano Pass

The gap lies between Twin Mountains and Paisano Peak at 5,074 feet, 228 feet above the surrounding prairie. When the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio laid track through it in 1882, it was reportedly the highest point on the line between New Orleans and Portland, Oregon. In 1929 the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient contracted to use the tracks from Alpine to the pass and build its own line southwest along the old Chihuahua Trail to Presidio, finished in 1930. Work on U.S. 90 through the pass began in March 1932.

What the plaque says

Paisano Pass Legend recounts that two Spaniards meeting here greeted each other "Mi Paisano" (My Countryman). First known to history when Juan Dominguez de Mendoza camped here on January 3, 1684. Well known after 1850 as a point on the Chihuahua Trail, an emigrant road to California.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Marfa Lights Viewing Area — 4.0 mi
  The roadside viewing area on US 90 nine miles east of Marfa, where people gather after dark to watch the horizon toward the Chinati Mountains for the Marfa lights.
• Museum of the Big Bend — 12 mi
  The museum of the Big Bend region and northern Mexico on the Sul Ross State University campus in Alpine, back since 2007 in its native-stone building of 1937.
• Presidio County Courthouse — 13 mi
  Marfa's domed courthouse of 1886, a Second Empire landmark finished in time for a New Year's ball, its statue of Justice still missing the scales someone shot away.
• Chinati Foundation — 13 mi
  Donald Judd's museum on the grounds of old Fort D. A. Russell in Marfa, where art, buildings and land are meant to be seen together, by guided tour.

More markers nearby

• Site of Marfa Army Air Field — 3.9 mi
• Marfa Lights — 3.9 mi
• Texas Confederate Colonel Henry P. Brewster (1816-1884) — 11 mi
• Marfa Stockyards — 11 mi