San Elizario

Behind thick adobe walls the presidio held quarters for four officers, barracks for forty-three soldiers, guardhouses, corrals, storerooms and a chapel. By the Mexican War it was deserted. Two American officers found it in ruins with most walls standing and bloody bandages inside, sign that Mexicans wounded at Brazito had been treated there. When the boundary commissioner John Russell Bartlett came through in 1851, settlers had taken the walls apart for adobe to build their homes.

What the plaque says

San Elizario Site of the Presidio de Nuestra Senora Del Pilar y Glorioso Senor San Jose established by Don Domingo Jironza Petriz de Cruzate in 1683 near Mision de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe in present Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Located on this site in 1773 and renamed Presidio de San Elzeario. Its chapel was served by Franciscan missionaries.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Elizario Historic District — steps away
  A plaza of adobe buildings at the end of the El Paso Mission Trail: an 1877 chapel, Gregorio Garcia's portaled house and the old county jail of Billy the Kid legend.
• Socorro Mission (Nuestra Senora de la Limpia Concepcion del Socorro) — 5.4 mi
  Socorro's adobe church on the El Paso Mission Trail, with walls five feet thick, carved vigas from an older church and a statue of Saint Michael said to have chosen the town.
• Tigua Indian Cultural Center, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo — 7.3 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.
• Ysleta Mission (Corpus Christi de la Ysleta del Sur) — 8.0 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.

More markers nearby

• Salt War — steps away
• San Elizario — steps away
• The Camino Real — steps away
• Juan de Onate Expedition - 1598 — steps away