page_title: Ciudad Juárez
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Ciudad Juárez / History
caption_attribution_description: English: X de Seb
context_page_description: Ciudad Juárez is the most populous city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The city is commonly referred to as simply Juárez, and was known as El Paso del Norte until 1888. Juárez is the seat of the Juárez Municipality with an estimated population of 1.5 million people. It lies on the Rio Grande river, south of El Paso, Texas, United States. Together with the surrounding areas, the cities form El Paso–Juárez, the second largest binational metropolitan area on the Mexico–U.S. border, with a combined population of over 2.7 million people.
  Four international points of entry connect Ciudad Juárez and El Paso: the Bridge of the Americas, the Ysleta International Bridge, the Paso del Norte Bridge, and the Stanton Street Bridge. Combined, these bridges allowed 22,958,472 crossings in 2008, making Ciudad Juárez a major point of entry and transportation into the U.S. for all of central northern Mexico. The city has a growing industrial center, which in large part is made up by more than 300 "maquiladoras" located in and around the city. According to a 2007 New York Times article, Ciudad Juárez was "absorbing more new industrial real estate space than any other North American city".
context_section_description: As 17th century Spanish explorers sought a route through the southern Rocky Mountains, the Franciscan Friar García de San Francisco founded Ciudad Juárez in 1659 as "El Paso del Norte" ("The North Pass"). The Misión de Guadalupe de los Mansos en el Paso del río del Norte became the first permanent Spanish development in the area in the 1660s, although Native American peoples were already present. The Franciscan friars established a community that grew in importance as commerce between Santa Fe and Chihuahua passed through it. The wood for the first bridge across the Rio Grande came from Santa Fe, New Mexico in the late 18th century. The original population of Mansos, Suma, Jumano, and other natives from the south brought by the Spanish from Central New Spain grew around the mission. In 1680 during the Pueblo Revolt, most of the Piro Pueblo and some of the Tiwa people branch of the Pueblo became refugees, A Mission was established for the Tigua in Ysleta del Sur. Piro Pueblo colonial era settlements along El Camino Real, south of the Guadalupe Mission, included Missions Real de San Lorenzo, Senecú del Sur, and Soccoro del Sur. Presidio del Nuestra Senora del Pilar del Paso del Rio Norte was established near the Mission in 1683.
  The population of the entire district was close to 5,000 in 1750 when the Apache attacked the other native towns and ranchos around the missions. Additional Presidios were established to counter them. One Presidio, San Elzeario, was established near El Porvenir in 1774, where it remained until being moved in 1788 to what is now San Elizario, Texas where that settlement grew up around that Presidio. Another was Presidio de San Fernando de Carrizal, which was established in 1774 at the San Fernando settlement that became present-day Carrizal, Chihuahua.
  The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo established the Rio Grande as the border between Mexico and the United States. The main channel of the Rio Grande had moved southwestward leaving the settlements of Ysleta, Socorro, and San Elzeario on the Camino Real on the north bank of the river, isolated from the rest of the towns, in Texas.
  Other settlements on the east bank of the Rio Grande were not part of a town at that time; as the U.S. Army set up its installations settlements grew around it. This would later become El Paso, Texas. From that time until around 1930, populations on both sides of the border moved freely across it.
  During the French intervention in Mexico (1862–1867), Benito Juárez's republican forces stopped temporarily at El Paso del Norte before establishing his government-in-exile in Chihuahua. After 1882, the city grew, in large part, because of the arrival of the Mexican Central Railway. Commerce thrived in the city as more banks began operating, telegraph and telephone services became available, and trams appeared. These commercial activities were under the firm control of the city's oligarchy, which consisted of the Ochoa, Samaniego, Daguerre, Provencio, and Cuarón families. In 1888, El Paso del Norte was renamed in honor of Benito Juárez.
  The city expanded significantly thanks to Díaz's free-trade policy, creating a new retail and service sector along the old Calle del Comercio (now Vicente Guerrero) and September 16 Avenue. A bullring opened in 1899. The Escobar brothers founded the city's first institution of higher education in 1906, the Escuela Particular de Agricultura. That same year, a series of public works are inaugurated, including the city's sewage and drainage system, as well as potable water. A public library, schools, new public market (the old Mercado Cuauhtémoc) and parks dotted the city, making it one of many Porfirian showcases. Modern hotels and restaurants catered to the increased international railroad traffic from the 1880s on.
  In 1909, Díaz and William Howard Taft planned a summit in Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, a historic first meeting between a Mexican and a U.S. president, and also the first time a U.S. president would cross the border into Mexico. But tensions rose on both sides of the border over the disput
caption: View of the Plaza de la Mexicanidad in north central Juárez
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