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El Paso
A desert border city at the pass of the Rio Grande
El Paso sits at the far western tip of Texas, where the Rio Grande cuts through a gap between mountain ranges — the "pass to the north" that gave the city its name. For centuries this was the natural crossing point of the river and the route through the desert, used by Spanish colonizers heading to New Mexico. The Franklin Mountains run right into the heart of the modern city, splitting it around their southern tip.
Across the river lies the much larger Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez, and the two form one of the largest binational metropolitan areas on the continent. The setting is high Chihuahuan Desert — dry, sunny, and roughly 3,800 feet in elevation — ringed by bare desert mountains. Closer to four other state capitals than to its own in Austin, El Paso is a city of the border far more than of greater Texas.