|
|
Frontera Road near the site of the Frontera Crossing,
Image provided by George D. Torok
The Frontera Settlement
El Paso, Texas
Research Packet and Narrative by:
Daniel Reyes
Leslie Covington
Dr. George D. Torok
Honors Project
Fall 2003
National Endowment for the Humanities Historical Markers Project
The Frontera Settlement
Frontera Road and Doniphan Drive
Frontera was the first settlement in American El
Paso. It was located at the site of a popular river ford along the
Chihuahua Trail used by Missouri and Santa Fe traders conducting
business with Chihuahua City, Chihuahua. The trial was part of El
Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, which continued through the interior to
Mexico City and had been in use for more than 250 years. Frontera was
located approximately eight miles north of the Ciudad Juarez’s
Guadalupe Mission, along present-day Frontera Road, near Doniphan
Drive on the westside of El Paso, Texas near the New Mexico border.
In August 1848, T. Frank White built a trading post
on the east bank of the Rio Grande. Although the end of the Mexican
War and the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo established the
river as an international boundary, White expected trade and travel to
resume along the Chihuahua Trail. The post was located at a popular
river crossing used when flooding and swift currents made it difficult
to ford the Rio Grande closer to town.
Here the river was wide and shallow allowing for a much easier
crossing of horses, mules, and wagons. When waters were high, canoes
were used to float cargo and wagons across.
White called the site Frontera, which means border or frontier in
Spanish, because it was located near the new borders of Texas,
Chihuahua, and New Mexico. Because mule trains often passed by the
west side of today’s Mount Cristo Rey and crossed at Frontera, it
became commonly known as Mule’s Ford.
White soon found his river crossing was located
along another important route: the road west to the California
goldfields. The El Paso area was one of the few oasis located along
the trail after hundreds of miles of dry, hot West Texas desert. By
mid-1849 more than four thousand emigrants were camped along the
river. White’s Frontera soon became the main trading center and river
ford in the area. It thrived as White sold supplies, pack animals, and
arranged river crossings. Frontera also drew the attention of
Lieutenant William H.C. Whiting who recommended it as the location for
a military post on the Rio Grande.
Not only did White become the first successful
merchant in American El Paso but he was soon the first magistrate and
the first collector of customs. Typical of the confusion over
boundaries, White was appointed Prefect by the Military Governor of
New Mexico, Colonel John M. Washington, even though Frontera was
located in Texas. During 1849 he removed several area residents from
their positions and extended his jurisdiction over the lower valley
settlements of Ysleta, Socorro, and San Elizario.
But White’s Frontera was soon competing with four other settlements in
American El Paso and fell on hard times. The military post was
established further down the river and by late 1850 many travelers
bypassed the upper crossing. In November 1850 White tried to sell his
land to U.S. Boundary Commissioner John R. Bartlett. Instead, Bartlett
briefly leased some of the land for use as an observatory. Activity at
the trading post declined and White no longer had the political
influence he once did. Shortly after making arrangements for the
observatory White left El Paso. His brother, Charles W. White,
apparently managed the property until the mid-1850s. A few years
later, the ranch and trading post were abandoned and in ruins.
Today, the site of White’s Frontera Settlement is
located in a quiet residential area of west El Paso. The river, tamed,
channeled, and narrowed in the early 20th century, lies
almost one mile west of the course it took in the 1840s.
Although a significant amount of construction and landscaping have
changed the area, it still has a rural, agricultural atmosphere.
Acequias water lawns, gardens, and fields and Doniphan Drive continues
north into farming regions of the upper valley. A marker, placed by
the Boundary Commission on White’s property, lies buried along
Frontera Road near the railroad tracks.
.
W.H. Timmons, El Paso: A Borderlands
History (El Paso, TX 1990), 104; Tim
B. Graves, Stephen F. Schlett, John A. Peterson, The
Canutillo-El Paso Upper Valley Water
Transmission Facilities Project: Survey Results and Recommendations
(El Paso, TX 1997), 15.
.
Rex W. Strickland, Six Who Came to
El Paso (El Paso,
TX 1963), 11-12.
.
Adolph Wislizenus, Memoir of a Tour to Northern Mexico connected
with Col. Doniphan’s Expedition in 1846 and 1847 (Washington,
D.C. 1848), 25-26.
.
Nancy Hamilton, “The Frontera Settlement,” Password 30
(Summer 1985), 57.
.
Strickland, Six Who Came, 11.
.
Strickland, Six Who Came, 12.
.
Hamilton, “ Frontera Settlement,” 60.
.
Graves, Schlett, and Peterson,
Canutillo-El Paso Upper Valley, 17.
|
