Site of Frontera

White was the first Anglo-American trader of record in the area, and with the Rio Grande now the boundary he kept the first customhouse at the new crossing. Frontera lay on both the Chihuahua-Santa Fe trail and the road west to California. Boundary commissioner John R. Bartlett leased ground from White for his observatory in 1851. White's brother Charles ran the post until 1855. Raids and the lack of military protection emptied the site, though it stayed on Randolph Marcy's War Department map and the Butterfield route maps.

What the plaque says

Site of Frontera At this site, the historic settlement of Frontera was established by T. Frank White in August 1848. White moved here shortly after the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo transferred this part of the El Paso del Norte region to the United States, but before the border between Texas and New Mexico had been established. He served as magistrate of the New Mexico territory, U.S. customs collector, and proprietor of a trading post and ranch. Frontera was located at the southwestern end of the Franklin Mountains, directly across from the 4,700-foot Cerro de Muleros (now known as Sierra de Cristo Rey). White's trading post and ranch were situated directly on the bank of the Rio Grande at Mule Ford, a local river crossing on the Chihuahua Trail (now part of the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail). White lost his political influence when the compromise of 1850 allocated this site to Texas. Frontera continued to exist for a few more years because the United States boundary commission maintained an astronomical observatory here while it surveyed the United States-Mexico border in the early 1850s. White finally sold his property to El Paso County Judge Henry Dexter in 1855 and left the area. The Dexter family used the land as a ranch and a mail station and the name Frontera gradually disappeared from the map. Though short lived, Frontera was one of the first five American settlements in this region, along with Franklin (El Paso), Hart's Mill, Concordia and Magoffinsville. It might have become the heart of a thriving metropolis had the compromise of 1850 placed it on the New Mexico side of the border. Instead, it was overshadowed by Franklin and eventually absorbed into the modern city of El Paso. (2013)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Magoffin Home State Historic Site — 6.5 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 — 7.4 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.
• Franklin Mountains State Park — 9.1 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.
• Ysleta Mission (Corpus Christi de la Ysleta del Sur) — 16 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

• El Paso del Rio del Norte — 3.1 mi
• 1966 Texas Western Basketball National Champions — 4.5 mi
• The University of Texas at El Paso — 4.9 mi
• El Paso del Rio del Norte — 5.1 mi