Smeltertown was a residential community in El Paso County,

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

, housing the workers of the

ASARCO Asarco LLC (American Smelting and Refining Company) is a mining, smelting, and refining company based in Tucson, Arizona, which mines and processes primarily copper. The company has been a subsidiary of Grupo México since 1999. Its three la ...

smelter and their families, between

El Paso El Paso (; "the pass") is a city in and the seat of El Paso County in the western corner of the U.S. state of Texas. The 2020 population of the city from the U.S. Census Bureau was 678,815, making it the 23rd-largest city in the U.S., the s ...

and the Texas borders with Mexico and New Mexico. With only one small neighborhood, now known as the La Calavera Historical Neighborhood, remaining since the Smelter's closure, Smeltertown is sometimes referred to as a

ghost town Ghost Town(s) or Ghosttown may refer to: * Ghost town, a town that has been abandoned Film and television * ''Ghost Town'' (1936 film), an American Western film by Harry L. Fraser * ''Ghost Town'' (1956 film), an American Western film by All ...

. The Smeltertown community was served by the San Jose church, and by the Jones School of the

El Paso Independent School District The El Paso Independent School District (or EPISD) is the largest school district serving El Paso, Texas (USA). Originally organized in 1883, it is currently the largest district in the Texas Education Agency's Educational Service Center (ESC) ...

. File:American Dam and Canal at Smeltertown El Paso Texas.jpg, Abandoned baja part of Smeltertown is left of center here, with the American Dam Headquarters (white building) in it, near the American Dam on the Rio Grande, in this aerial view from over downtown El Paso. La Calavera is at upper right. File:La Calavera Historic Neighborhood.jpg, Looking down into La Calavera Historic Neighborhood from beside Executive Center Blvd. File:Smeltertown cemetery adapted from NARA 545363.jpg, Smeltertown cemetery with ASARCO smelter chimneys in the background, still operating, in 1972. File:Loop 375 Executive Center Blvd SPUI crop.jpg, The new (in 2019)

Border West Expressway Loop 375 is a beltway that partially encircles the city of El Paso, Texas. The beltway is mostly a freeway, except for its northern section, which includes at-grade intersections. The highway passes through various areas of El Paso, funneling tr ...

single-point urban interchange A single-point urban interchange (SPUI, or ), also called a single-point interchange (SPI) or single-point diamond interchange (SPDI), is a type of highway interchange. The design was created in order to help move large volumes of traffic thr ...

– El Paso's first SPUI – is at Executive Center Blvd., which parallels San Marcos Drive of the La Calavera Historic Neighborhood of Smeltertown. The Smeltertown Cemetery is visible at the bottom by the expressway.

References

{{coord, 31, 47, 00, N, 106, 31, 36, W, type:city_region:US-TX_source:GNIS-enwiki, display=title Ghost towns in Texas

See also

References