El Paso, Texas

El Paso, Texas

El Paso (/ɛlˈpæsoʊ/; from Spanish, The Passage) is the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States of America, and lies in far West Texas. According to the 2010 census the city's population is 649,121. El Paso is the nineteenth most populous city in the United States of America and the sixth most populous city in the state of Texas. Its metropolitan area covers all of El Paso County, whose population in 2010 was 800,647.

El Paso stands on the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte), across the border from Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. The two cities form a combined international metropolitan area, sometimes called El Paso-Juárez, with Juárez being the significantly larger of the two in population. They have a combined population of two million, two-thirds of which reside in Juárez. In 2010 El Paso was awarded an All-America City Award, the oldest community-recognition program in the United States.

El Paso is home to the University of Texas at El Paso (founded in 1914 as The Texas State School of Mines and Metallurgy, and later, Texas Western College; its current name dates from 1967) and the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center at El Paso. Fort Bliss, one of the largest military complexes of the United States Army, lies to the east and northeast of the city, with training areas extending north into New Mexico, up to the White Sands Missile Range and neighboring Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo. El Paso is the first large city in the world to have a spaceport in the vicinity. Spaceport America, which lies 90 miles from El Paso, has seen the completion of several successful manned, suborbital flights. The Franklin Mountains extend into El Paso from the north and nearly divide the city into two sections; the western half forms the beginnings of the Mesilla Valley, and the eastern slopes connect in the central business district at the south end of the mountain range.