Site of First Mission in Texas

Nobody called this ground Texas in October 1680. Historians place the area's first Mass near Ysleta on October 12 of that year, when refugees from the Pueblo Revolt were taking shelter on the south bank of the Rio Grande. Within a few years of the pueblo's founding, twenty-one Spanish families were living beside the Tigua. The settlement turned American only after the river shifted in 1829-31 and the 1848 treaty made the main channel the boundary, which is why Ysleta is called perhaps the oldest town in Texas.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ysleta Mission (Corpus Christi de la Ysleta del Sur) — steps away
  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 — 0.7 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.
• Socorro Mission (Nuestra Senora de la Limpia Concepcion del Socorro) — 2.6 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.
• San Elizario Historic District — 8.0 mi
  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.

More markers nearby

• Oldest Mission in Texas — steps away
• Corpus Christi de la Ysleta — steps away
• Alderete-Candelaria House — steps away
• San Antonio de Senecu — 1.6 mi