Smeltertown was a residential community in El Paso County,

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

, housing the workers of the

ASARCO ASARCO (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 largest ...

smelter and their families, between

El Paso El Paso (; ; or ) is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States. The 2020 United States census, 2020 population of the city from the United States Census Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau was 678,815, making it the List of ...

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 A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...

. 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, El Paso, Texas (United States, USA). Originally organized in 1883, it is currently the largest district in the Texas Education Agency's E ...

. 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 The American Dam, or American Diversion Dam, is a diversion dam on the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas, that divides the river water between Mexico and the U.S. It is about north of the point where the west bank of the river enters Mexico, from th ...

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

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 th ...

– 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