Things to do in El Paso

Nature · The mountain range running through the middle of the city

A state park of roughly 24,000 acres, most of it inside El Paso's city limits — among the largest urban parks in the United States — with desert peaks, a tramway to Ranger Peak and trails that start from residential streets.

Local tip: Go at first light between October and April; from May the exposed trails are genuinely dangerous by mid-morning. The Wyler Aerial Tramway up Ranger Peak gives the whole binational view in ten minutes if you do not want to climb.

Neighborhood · South downtown, against the border fence

The oldest neighbourhood in El Paso and one of the most historically important immigrant districts in the United States — the point of entry for enormous numbers of Mexican migrants across the twentieth century, with murals covering whole blocks.

Local tip: Walk it with the Museum of History's mural map rather than wandering. The tenement blocks, the bridge and the fence are all within a few streets of each other, which is exactly why this neighbourhood explains the city faster than anything else.

Culture · The Lower Valley, south-east along the river

Three seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Spanish missions — Ysleta, Socorro and San Elizario — strung along the old river corridor, with Ysleta the parish of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, a federally recognised tribe continuously present here since 1680.

Local tip: Go on a Sunday morning when the missions are actually in use rather than empty. The Tigua cultural centre at Ysleta del Sur runs dance and bread-baking demonstrations, and the Socorro Mission's carved vigas are the ones worth stopping for.

Landmark · Central El Paso

A downtown of early-twentieth-century towers around a restored plaza with alligator sculptures recalling the live ones kept there until 1965, served by a heritage streetcar line running restored 1950s PCC cars in a loop past UTEP.

Local tip: The streetcar is cheap, air-conditioned and mostly used by people who actually want to get somewhere. Ride the full loop once for the orientation — it takes in downtown, the university and the edge of the border district in about forty minutes.

Nature · About 50 km east of the city

Granite hills honeycombed with natural rock basins that held water in the desert for thousands of years, carrying one of the largest concentrations of pictographs in North America — and, separately, some of the best bouldering in the world.

Local tip: Access is capped and reservation-only, with most of the site available only on a guided tour, so book weeks ahead rather than driving out on spec. That restriction is why the pictographs survive; treat it as the price of admission rather than an obstacle.

Food · Citywide, concentrated on Alameda and the Eastside

El Paso's food is northern-Mexican and border-specific rather than Tex-Mex: gorditas, menudo on a Sunday, machacado, roasted New Mexico green chile in season, and Chico's rolled tacos in tomato broth under a mountain of cheese.

Local tip: Start at L&J Cafe next to Concordia Cemetery, which has been open since Prohibition and is the safest introduction. Then argue about Chico's with a local, which is the actual point of Chico's.