EL PASO, Texas -- The melody and words of Marty Robbins' gunslinger ballad "El Paso" rattled through my head as I walked off the plane to visit this classic West Texas town.

Never mind that a rented minivan _ not a horse _ would be my means of transportation.

And while we didn't end up at Rosa's Cantina, the setting of that song, we happily settled at Jaxson's, which bills itself as the fourth-oldest brew pub in Texas.

To this day, El Paso retains a bit of its well-earned Wild West character from the 1870s, when the nation's second transcontinental railroad _ after the one that was joined in Utah _ was completed here and outlaws and gunslingers were common.

There's the hardscrabble desert landscape, where only the tiny trickle of the Rio Grande separates Texas from Mexico.

And there seem to be cowboy boots everywhere _ indeed, El Paso may be the cowboy-boot-factory capital of the world. "El Paso is about as wild and West as you can get," said Mary Moyer, a tourist information specialist for the El Paso Chamber of Commerce. "There was a need for saddles, boots, holsters and horse tack. There are quite a few factories here."

But while El Paso may still look like the Wild West, it has become quite tame. The city is rated one of the safest in the United States, Moyer said.

The European history of El Paso and nearby Juarez dates back to 1681, when Spanish conquistador Juan de Onate established the Mission of Guadalupe in what is now Juarez, according to Prince McKenzie, curator of the Railroad and Transportation Museum of El Paso and a historian.

El Paso gets its name from a mountain pass called El Paso del Norte, which Onate used to enter what is now U.S. territory.

The tiny communities of Franklin and Magoffin joined to form El Paso shortly after the Mexican war in 1851.

El Paso boomed because of the railroad. While it would have been cheaper to send the first transcontinental railroad through El Paso, President Abraham Lincoln directed it through Utah in deference to the Civil War to keep the railroad in the north.

But the second transcontinental route went through El Paso and, by 1881, the city counted five major railroads, making it the greatest rail hub of the 19th century west of the Mississippi River. To this day, the Texas Eagle and Sunset Limited Amtrak passenger trains come through El Paso.

In the spirit of the old Wild West, we quickly headed to a cowboy-boot factory outlet. We wanted to at least look the part, as did, apparently, the many European tourists in the store.

The store, just off Interstate 10, looked unpromising from the outside, an ugly concrete brick building. Things were different on the inside, with row after row of boots and leather products to tempt.

My 2-year-old granddaughter ended up proudly walking out in a pair of red boots that matched one of the three pairs her mother purchased. My son also bought his first pair.

Hungry again, we tried the barbecue at The Stateline on the western edge of town on the border with New Mexico. The parking lot was in Texas, the restaurant in New Mexico. The food was worth the trip _ no matter what state. The beef ribs were huge, the barbecue tangy, the tenderloin cooked to perfection and the ambience all-Western.

We wanted to explore Juarez, but had been warned about the difficulty of driving in Mexico because of a faster driving pace, different laws, security issues and lack of insurance from American rental-car companies. So, the next day, we parked underneath El Paso's beautiful convention center and bought $12 all-day passes on the El Paso-Juarez Trolley Company's Border Jumper Service.

Visitors can hop on and off seven stops in Juarez, shopping for everything from Mexican arts and crafts to cheap pharmaceuticals.

There were two major highlights: dining on authentic Mexican cuisine at Ajua and bargaining for leather goods at Casa Onate.

Luckily, Tony Montana, one of the owners of Casa Onate, spoke English and, in between the bargaining, shared information about handmade leather and the cattle industry in the region.

I walked out with a black leather vest, a checkbook cover, cheap liquor and a great feeling of friendship with the store owners, who went out of their way to make the experience fun, especially for the 2-year-old who pranced around in a sombrero and posed for a photo on a beautiful saddle.

That night, back in El Paso, we discovered a classic restaurant called Los Bandidos de Carlos & Mickey's. Live music filled the air, and samplings from a salsa-and-fajita bar staved off hungry appetites as we waited for a table.

To find real Mexican food in El Paso, you must travel to Mexico, Moyer explained. Here, it was all Tex-Mex, which is a U.S. version of Mexican food that includes more deep-fried foods cooked in a different style than found south of the border.

"If you are a local, you are going to like the enchiladas at this place, the beans at that place and the chili colorado at another," she said. "But people get the mistaken idea that this is Mexican food. It is actually true Tex-Mex. A lot of this is fried. There is nothing like it."

My granddaughter, having tried her first fried ice cream at Carlos & Mickey's, would certainly agree. Her parents quite enjoyed the Texas-size frozen mango margarita.

In another effort to sample El Paso's food and culture, we visited the magnificent Camino Real Hotel in the heart of the historic downtown for lunch. The lobby included pieces by Picasso. A colorful Tiffany-style glass dome cast light on an elegant wood bar.

El Paso has one of the better zoos in the Southwest, and features an exhibit of rare Mexican gray wolves. Sea lions were another highlight.

The Insights El Paso Science Center, in a modern building near the convention center, is another kid favorite. According to education director Adrian Aragones, the emphasis is on hands-on activities that immerse kids in science.

A robotic dinosaur exhibit through May, for example, allows kids to dig for "dinosaur bones" and even color and invent dinosaurs.

The El Paso Museum of Art, which is guarded by a colorful Luis Jimenez fiberglass sculpture of a Mexican cowboy, is also in the city's cultural district, which will include a new historical museum in 2007.

The Railroad and Transportation Museum features a classic 1857 American steam locomotive.

"The coming of the railroads in the 1870s made El Paso one of the wildest frontier towns in the West," said curator McKenzie. "We had more gunfights and shootouts than just about any city in the West. There was a lawlessness. We went from a population of 738 in 1880 to more than 10,000 in 1890."

El Paso has been tamed. But the old border town retains the feel of a railroad hub and cowboy haven. It's also a place where cultures continue to meet, only adding to its appeal as a tourist destination.

 

(Contact Tom Wharton at Wharton(at)sltrib.com.)

 

 

 

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.)