San Elizario Historic District

Little is left of the Spanish presidio of San Elizario, but the town that grew around it has kept a plaza of nineteenth-century adobe buildings that rewards an unhurried walk.

The white chapel on the plaza was built in 1877 on the site of an earlier Mexican chapel. It is often taken for a mission, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Inside, a balcony at the rear looks down the nave to the altar. It is a working church, so visit outside service times.

Los Portales, near the plaza, was built in the early 1850s as the home of Gregorio Nacenieno Garcia, a farmer, rancher and landowner who was a captain of Texas Rangers in 1870 and county judge in 1877. Its thick adobe walls carry cottonwood vigas, saplings and thatch, and its Territorial-style front sits back behind a long inset gallery, the portal that gives the house its name. Garcia gave it to the town in the 1880s, and it served as a school. It now holds the historic district's museum and information center.

A block southeast of the plaza stands the adobe that served as El Paso County's jail and courtroom while San Elizario was the county seat, from 1850 to 1873 with a break in the 1860s. The county bought a prefabricated iron cell from Chicago for it. Legend says Billy the Kid broke a friend, Melquiades Segura, out of this jail, the only escape it ever had. The state marker calls it legend, and that is the right word.