The Rio Grande does not hold still. In the nineteenth century it wandered south across farmland between the settlements that became El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, and the tract it left on the north bank, the Chamizal, became a border dispute. Mexico laid formal claim to it in 1895. Arbitration in 1911 failed to end the matter, and Cordova Island, a piece of Mexico on the north side of the river, complicated it further.
In 1962 Presidents John F. Kennedy and Adolfo Lopez Mateos agreed on a plan: a new concrete-lined channel would cut through the Chamizal and Cordova, with Mexico taking the land south of it and the United States the land to the north. Lyndon Johnson completed the negotiations in the Chamizal Treaty of 1963. On October 28, 1967, Johnson met President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz on the border to proclaim the settlement, and the river was turned into its new channel the next year. Thousands of El Paso residents, most of them Mexican American, had to leave their homes in the condemned neighborhoods.
Congress set aside part of the land the United States received as the memorial, which opened in 1973. Its 55 acres hold walking trails, picnic areas, an outdoor amphitheater and a theater of almost 500 seats, where the park presents music, dance and plays from both sides of the border. The Nuestra Herencia mural near the entrance tells the area's history and the story of the dispute.
The closest stops worth working into your route
Roadside plaques and monuments within a short detour