Socorro

About Socorro

Socorro is a city of about 35,000 people in the Rio Grande Valley of El Paso County, just southeast of El Paso and close to the Mexican border. Its roots go back to 1680, when Spanish settlers and Piro people fled the Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico and founded a mission here, making Socorro one of the oldest communities in Texas.

The heart of town is the Socorro Mission, an adobe church completed in the 1840s after floods destroyed earlier buildings, with hand-carved ceiling beams saved from its predecessors. It is one of three historic sites on the El Paso Mission Trail, together with the Ysleta Mission upstream and the San Elizario Chapel a few miles downstream. Socorro is also home to Rio Vista Farm, a historic district that once served as a processing center for the Bracero guest worker program.

Today Socorro is a fast-growing, largely Hispanic community surrounded by irrigated fields, cotton farms and pecan orchards. A visit is easy to combine with El Paso's museums, the San Elizario art district and the mountains of Franklin Mountains State Park.