About El Paso

El Paso (/ɛlˈpæsoʊ/; from Spanish, The Passage) is the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States, and lies in far West Texas. As of the 2010 census the city's population was 649,121. El Paso is the 19th most populous city in the United States and the sixth most populous city in the state of Texas. Its metropolitan area covers all of El Paso County, whose population in 2010 was 800,647.

El Paso stands on the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte), across the border from Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. The two cities form a combined international metropolitan area, sometimes called El Paso–Juárez, with Juárez being the significantly larger of the two in population. They have a combined population of two million, two-thirds of which reside in Juárez. In 2010 El Paso was awarded an All-America City Award, the oldest community-recognition program in the United States.

El Paso is home to the University of Texas at El Paso (founded in 1914 as The Texas State School of Mines and Metallurgy, and later, Texas Western College; its current name dates from 1967) and the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center at El Paso. Fort Bliss, one of the largest military complexes of the United States Army, lies to the east and northeast of the city, with training areas extending north into New Mexico, up to the White Sands Missile Range and