History of the Mexican Revolution in El Paso

1. The Mexican Revolution
in El Paso
1906-1915

2. Research Questions
• Who were the key groups that used El Paso as a base shortly before and during
the Revolution?
• What important landmarks can still be found in or near El Paso, that played an
important role in the Mexican Revolution, and where are they located?

3. Trost Buildings (https://www.henrytrost.org)
Many of the buildings from the revolutionary period in El Paso were
designed by the Trost architectural firm. You will see the reference
to Trost in several of the slides here.
In late 1903, Henry Trost moved to join his brother Gustavus Trost
in El Paso, who had been there since 1902. Henry and Gustavus
opened the architectural firm of Trost & Trost. The firm enjoyed
instant success and Henry designed homes and buildings in many
Southwestern cities, pioneering the use of steel-reinforced concrete.
Trost built El Paso’s first skyscrapers and large downtown
buildings. Although largely neglected and abandoned now, their
beauty continues to impress and remind us of a time when El Paso
was one of the greatest and most promising cities in the American
Southwest.

4. Sheldon Hotel (A Trost Building)

5. Sheldon Hotel (A Trost Building)
The Sheldon Hotel was first constructed in 1888 as a four-story office building for
professionals. The building was remodeled around the turn of the century and a fifth
floor was added to turn the building into a first-class modern hotel. President Taft was a
guest here when he visited El Paso to meet with Porfirio Diaz in October of 1909. Later,
on January 14, 1910, the El Paso Times reported that Francisco Madero stayed at the
hotel on his way to Chihuahua to campaign in Mexico. The hotel became a center for
revolutionaries, counterrevolutionaries, journalists, and spies throughout the revolution.
The hotel was destroyed on April 9, 1929, and the Hilton corporation purchased the land
in October of 1929 to build the Hilton Hotel, which still stands in downtown El Paso.
Today, the Union Plaza Hotel occupies the site where the Sheldon Hotel once stood.

6. The Caples Building (300 E. San Antonio Ave.)

7. The Caples Building (A Trost Building)
After the failure of the first Maderista uprising on November 20, 1910, Madero was
despondent and considered sailing for Europe. Abraham Gonzales, however,
convinced Madero to join them in El Paso where Gonzales was the director of the
International Headquarters of the Revolutionary Junta.
Gonzales’s organization had set up its headquarters on the fifth floor of the Caples
building, located on the southwest corner of San Antonio Avenue and Mesa Street.
During this time Abraham Gonzales also recruited two of the key figures in the
Revolution, Pascual Orozco and Pancho Villa.

8. Villa Stash House (331 Leon St.)

9. Villa Stash House
Pancho Villa used El Paso as a base of operations for recruiting soldiers and supplying
his rebel army.
This house was owned by George Benton during the Mexican Revolution. It was used by
Pancho Villa and his brother Hipólito to stash money and jewelry that they used to
support themselves and their activities. In 1915, the U.S. Customs Service raided the
house and found $500,000 in money and gold, and another $30,000 worth of jewelry in
Benton’s safe. The Villa family later made a claim for the valuables and recovered most
of them from the U.S. government after providing proof of ownership.

10. Hotel Paso del Norte (Near El Paso St. & San Antonio Ave)

11. Hotel Paso del Norte (A Trost Building)
Constructed between 1910 and 1912, the Hotel Paso del Norte
was a state-of-the-art steel and concrete hotel. It served as a
major social hub for El Pasoans, wealthy cattle ranchers on
both sides of the border, and visitors of all kinds. It is located
near El Paso Street and San Antonio Avenue and was known in
later times as the Camino Real Hotel. (The modern Marriott
Hotel Paso del Norte is in a newer building a short distance
away.)
After Villa defeated Federal troops at the Battle of Ojinaga, it
created a refugee situation among those who had benefitted
from or worked for the Porfiriato. One of these refugees was
Luis Terrazas, the former governor of Chihuahua and head of
the powerful Creel-Terrazas family. Terrazas rented out the
entire first floor of the hotel.

12. Shelton-Payne Arms Company
(301-303 S. El Paso St.)

13. Shelton-Payne Arms Company
The building that used to house the Shelton-Payne Arms Company is
located on El Paso and Overland streets at 301-303 El Paso Street. It was
constructed in 1887. The Shelton-Payne Arms Company was one of the
main suppliers of arms and ammunition to all sides during the Mexican
Revolution. Arms dealing was a highly profitable trade during the years of
the Mexican Revolution.
It was the principal supplier of Madero’s forces leading up to the Battle of
Juarez. The revolutionary junta in El Paso worked feverishly to supply
Pancho Villa’s and Pasqual Orozco’s growing forces outside of Juarez with
munition. Abraham Gonzalez is reported to have contracted 60,000 rounds
of ammunition from Shelton-Payne and sent them across the river to the
rebel forces before the Battle of Juarez.

14. Emporium Bar (Mexican Club) & Roma Hotel

15. Emporium Bar & Roma Hotel (423 S. El Paso St.)
The Emporium Bar, also known as the “Mexican Club” was located on the
first floor of the Southern Hotel at 423 South El Paso Street.
Pancho Villa lived next door at the Hotel Roma and frequented many
places on South El Paso Street around 1913, so he could often be seen at
the Emporium drinking a strawberry soda or other non-alcoholic drink.
The Southern Hotel building was razed in 2003 to make way for a Burger
King parking lot, but the historical marker can be found next to the Burger
King parking lot to show where the famous bar was. The Emporium Bar
was a center of intrigue in El Paso, filled with spies, revolutionaries, and
counterrevolutionaries. Pancho Villa was once approached here by a
possible German spy and Huerta agent, Maximiliano Kloss to try to
convince Villa to switch sides to President Huerta, but Villa refused.

16. The Elite Confectionary Company

17. The Elite Confectionary Company

18. Sheldon Hotel
The Elite Confectionary Company is famous for
being the place where Pancho Villa liked to visit for
his favorite treats such as chocolate-covered
baseballs, peanut brittle, and strawberry soda. He is
said to have been a teetotaler, preferring sweets
instead.
Otis Aultman, a famous photographer of the
Revolution, took the well-known photo of Pancho
Villa and Pasqual Orozco sitting together here in May
1911, shortly after the Battle of Juarez.

19. Evergreen Cemetery (4301 Alameda Avenue)

20. Evergreen Cemetery
There are several well-known incidents from the Mexican Revolution, where the
people who died wound up in Evergreen Cemetery in El Paso. We can still find
many of their graves there today.
For example, there are several employees of the ASARCO mining company buried
here who were murdered in 1916 in Chihuahua by an associate of Pancho Villa,
General Pablo Lopez.
Also, Victoriano Huerta is buried here. Huerta betrayed Francisco Madero and had
him murdered before declaring himself president, initiating the second and bloodier
phase of the Mexican revolution. Huerta and Pascual Orozco were arrested near El
Paso in New Mexico while trying to make a comeback and secretly enter Mexico to
start fighting again.
Huerta died on January 13, 1916 , while under house arrest in El Paso, and was
buried in Concordia Cemetery next to the body of Pascual Orozco. Eventually,
Huerta’s body was moved to Evergreen Cemetery and Pascual Orozco’s body was
returned to Chihuahua, Mexico in 1923.

21. El Paso Laundry & Cleaners Company

22. Sheldon Hotel
Located at 901 South Santa Fe Street and constructed in 1895, this building
provided a platform that overlooked Juarez and was one of the best places to view
the Battle of Juarez. It is reported to be the only building still standing in El Paso,
where bullet holes from the Battle of Juarez can still be found. This was also where
President Taft and Mexican President Porfirio Diaz first met on October 16, 1909,
before the Revolution broke out. They met directly in front of the laundry building
where they received a 21-gun salute.
The building is located next to the border, but Santa Fe no longer has a bridge and
the road ends just a few yards from this building. During the Mexican Revolution,
this was the main crossing into Juarez using the old wooden Santa Fe bridge. Today
cars and pedestrians use the two newer bridges on Stanton and El Paso streets
which are just a few blocks over. The street is called Santa Fe Street because it was
originally the main route between Chihuahua City and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

23. Smelter Town

24. Smelter Town

25. Smelter Town

26. Smelter Town
Smelter Town was an ASARCO company town located directly
across from the Casa de Adobe where Francisco Madero set up his
provisional government before the Battle of Juarez. As such, the
residents of Smeltertown, or Esmeltianos as they were called, had a
front row seat to the beginning of the Mexican Revolution and the
revolutionary troops.
Smelter Town also provided a strategic location for smuggling
weapons, which enriched many El Pasoans. Some Smelter Town
residents would hide the weapons in their homes until they could be
taken across the Rio Grande without detection
Smelter Town is gone, but the town cemetery is still there and can
be visited.
https://borderzine.com/2012/11/smelter-town-%E2%80%93-a-personal-look-at-a-ghost-
town-firmly-embedded-in-el-paso-history/

27. La Casa De Adobe

28. La Casa De Adobe

29. La Casa de Adobe
When the decision was made to move the revolutionary government onto Mexican
soil, it was here at what is called today the Casa de Adobe (a museum and replica of
the original structure) that Francisco Madero set up his provisional government and
headquarters in April 1911.
The small adobe building is located just a very few yards from the US-Mexico
border and very close to Historical Border Marker #1, which is a small white
obelisk. The famous photo of the principal revolutionary leaders before the Battle
of Juarez was taken in front of the adobe house. Bell Telephone Company installed
a telephone and line to the house and reporters and other visitors frequently crossed
the river to talk with the revolutionaries.
The house can be reached by traveling through the western suburbs of Juarez (not
recommended if you don’t know the area) or by accessing it through a gate that the
Border Patrol sometimes opens for visitors to cross directly onto the property of the
museum.

30. Mexico North-Western Railway

31. The Mexico North-Western Railway
The Mexico North-Western Railway was an important Canadian-American venture in
the Mexican state of Chihuahua, which began operations in 1909, just a few months
before the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution. It barely lasted for a little over half a
century, but it played a central role in many of the events of the first half of the
Revolution, until the Revolution destroyed it by making it financially unsustainable.
The railway began approximately one-hundred miles to the west of Chihuahua City
at the rail town of La Junta, before heading north to Ciudad Juarez. The railway
tused a subsidiary rail company, El Paso Southern, to cross the border and connect
it to railways throughout the United States. The total length of the railway was 351
miles from La Junta to Ciudad Juarez.
Today, most of the track is not used or has disappeared, although the route into Juarez
can be easily traced along the city street Eje Vial Juan Gabriel. At some point, the
railway built a beautiful terminal in Ciudad Juarez. It had an Art Deco look to it and was
obviously intended to be the crown jewel of the railroad. Today the building is
unremarkable and not in great shape, but it is currently used as a multi-unit apartment
building. It is located at the southern end of Plaza Benito Juárez on the corner of Ramón
Corona Street and Eje Vial Juan Gabriel

32. The Mexican Revolution
in El Paso
1906-1915