Photo by Danielle Gallo
With its massive whitewashed adobe form, the presidio chapel at San Elizario anchors the community’s
colonial square, in a classic example of Spanish colonial architecture.
On The Missions Trail
by Danielle Gallo
F
or the majority of resi-
dents of the Big Bend, El
Paso is a place to buy sta-
ples, pick up friends and rela-
tives at the airport and get a
taste of urban life to contrast
with the Big Bend’s rustic liv-
ing. Though it is one of the old-
est towns in the United States,
with most of El Paso’s history
tucked away among purely util-
itarian structures it can be diffi-
cult to find the gems of bygone
eras.
Just minutes to the east of
the city is a string of just such
historic gems, on the road
known as the Missions Trail.
Here, like time in the rings of
an ancient tree, the history of
El Paso can be traced to the
earliest Spanish settlements of
the 17th century. All three mis-
sions along this trail are still pri-
vately owned by the Catholic
Diocese, and all three are still
8
active churches.
The missions were founded
in the 1600s by Spanish
Catholic monks. The local
Indian tribes, the Mansos and
Sumas, both horticulturalist
and hunter-gatherer societies,
and the Tigua and Piro
Indians, originally from north-
ern New Mexico, built the mis-
sions from sun-baked adobe
under the direction of the
Spanish priests. The Tigua and
Piro had fled the Indian revolts
of the 1680s in northern New
Mexico, where the tribes had
risen up against the Spanish
colonists, and taken refuge with
the Spanish at El Paso. The
area at the time was part of El
Camino Real de Tierra
Adentro, or The Royal Road of
the Interior, the road that con-
nected Mexico City to Santa Fe
within New Spain. It is the old-
est – and was once the longest
– contiguous road in North
America. All three missions are
situated within a few minutes’
drive of each other on what is
now Socorro Road, not 10
minutes from Interstate 10.
First to be built was Mission
Ysleta, both the oldest continu-
ously active church in Texas
and the cornerstone of Ysleta,
the oldest township in the state.
Originally dedicated in 1660,
the temporary plank church
was replaced in 1682 by the
first permanent mission. The
Tigua tribe built the mission
and named it Ysleta after the
Isleta pueblo in northern New
Mexico they had been forced
to flee. The tribe still occupies
the land today. The disastrous
flooding of the Rio Grande in
1740 and 1829 severely dam-
aged two iterations of the mis-
sion, and the existing adobe
structure was completed in
Cenizo
Second Quarter 2012
Photo by Danielle Gallo
The mission at Ysleta, the oldest church in the oldest town in
Texas, still celebrates Mass seven days a week. Built by the
Tigua tribe in the 17th century, it is still the focal point of the
tribe’s religious community.