El Paso and Ciudad Juárez form a single metropolitan area divided by a line on a map and a fence in the desert. The cities share a valley, share a culture, share families separated by citizenship. El Paso is 80% Hispanic, mostly Mexican-American, the border not a barrier but a daily crossing for workers and shoppers and relatives. The city of 680,000 sits at the western tip of Texas, closer to San Diego than to Houston, more connected to Mexico than to Austin. El Paso is what happens when the border runs through a community rather than between them - a place where the wall is simultaneously omnipresent and beside the point.
The Rio Grande runs through El Paso-Juárez, though 'runs' is generous - the river is dry much of the year, the water diverted for irrigation. The border crossings handle 20 million legal crossings annually; the illegal crossings are fewer than the politics suggest. The maquiladoras on the Mexican side employ workers who live in Ciudad Juárez; the shoppers cross to El Paso for American goods; the families attend quinceañeras on whichever side the party is held. The border is not a line that separates but a zone that both cities share. The wall that the federal government builds and rebuilds changes little about how the region actually works.
El Paso is consistently ranked among America's safest large cities - crime rates lower than most cities half its size. The safety surprises those who assume the border means danger; the reality contradicts the assumption. Ciudad Juárez, directly across the river, experienced cartel violence that made it one of the world's most dangerous cities in 2010-2012; El Paso remained safe. The 2019 Walmart shooting, a white supremacist attack targeting Hispanics, killed 23 people and shattered El Paso's sense of security. The city was attacked for what it is - Mexican-American, border-crossing, binational - by someone who hated what it represents.
Fort Bliss is one of the largest military installations in the country - 1.1 million acres, the largest in the Army, home to the 1st Armored Division and tens of thousands of soldiers and families. The military presence provides economic stability that many border cities lack. The base extends into New Mexico; the training ranges reach further. Fort Bliss creates the paradox of El Paso: a border city that's also a military city, the wall and the base coexisting, the military families shopping at the same HEB as the families with relatives in Juárez.
The Franklin Mountains bisect El Paso - one of the largest urban parks in the country, 24,000 acres of Chihuahuan Desert accessible from city streets. The hiking trails offer views of the valley, the border fence, Juárez spreading across the hills opposite. The mountains make El Paso dramatic in ways that other border cities aren't - the sense of terrain, the elevation changes, the desert landscape unchanged since before the border existed. The Franklin Mountains remind El Paso that the valley it occupies is geographical reality; the border is political abstraction.
El Paso is served by El Paso International Airport (ELP). The Franklin Mountains State Park offers hiking; the Wyler Aerial Tramway provides views without effort. The El Paso Museum of Art and the El Paso Holocaust Museum offer cultural programming. The Mission Trail connects three Spanish colonial missions. For food, the Mexican food is authentic and everywhere; the brisket is Texas. Crossing to Ciudad Juárez requires a passport; current safety conditions should be checked. The weather is desert: hot summers, mild winters, sun nearly every day. El Paso rewards visitors who understand that the border is a seam, not a wall.
Located at 31.76°N, 106.49°W in the Rio Grande valley at the western tip of Texas. From altitude, El Paso and Ciudad Juárez appear as a single metropolitan area divided by the river - the Franklin Mountains bisecting El Paso, the urban development continuous across the border, the wall visible as a line through the urban fabric. Fort Bliss extends to the east. What appears from altitude as one city is two nations - where the border divides what geography unites, where the culture flows across the line, and where El Paso and Juárez form something neither could be alone.