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. 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. 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 disputed
Chamizal strip connecting Ciudad Juárez to El Paso, even though it would have been considered neutral territory with no flags present during the summit. The
Texas Rangers, 4,000 U.S. and Mexican troops, U.S. Secret Service agents, FBI agents and U.S. marshals were all called in to provide security.
Frederick Russell Burnham, the celebrated scout, was put in charge of a 250 private security detail hired by
John Hays Hammond. On October 16, the day of the summit, Burnham and Private C.R. Moore, a Texas Ranger, discovered a man holding a concealed
palm pistol standing at the El Paso Chamber of Commerce building along the procession route. Burnham and Moore captured, disarmed, and arrested the assassin within only a few feet of Díaz and Taft.
Mexican Revolution The city was Mexico's largest border town by 1910. As such, it held strategic importance during the
Mexican Revolution. In May 1911, about 3,000 revolutionary fighters under the leadership of
Francisco I. Madero laid siege to Ciudad Juárez, which was garrisoned by 500 regular Federal troops under the command of General Juan José Navarro. Navarro's force was supported by 300 civilian auxiliaries and local police. After two days of heavy fighting most of the city had fallen to the insurrectionists and the surviving federal soldiers had withdrawn to their barracks. Navarro then formally surrendered to Madero. The capture of a key border town at an early stage of the revolution not only enabled the revolutionary forces to bring in weapons and supplies from El Paso, but marked the beginning of the end for the demoralized Diaz regime. During the subsequent years of the conflict,
Pancho Villa and other revolutionaries struggled for the control of the town (and income from the Federal Customs House), destroying much of the city during battles in
1911 and 1913. Much of the population abandoned the city between 1914 and 1917. Tourism, gambling, and light manufacturing drove the city's recovery from the 1920s until the 1940s. A series of mayors in the 1940s–1960s, like Carlos Villareal and René Mascareñas Miranda, ushered in a period of high growth and development predicated on the PRONAF border industrialization development program.
Beautification A beautification program spruced up the city center, building a series of arched porticos around the main square, as well as neo-colonial façades for main public buildings such as the city health clinic, the central fire station, and city hall. The cathedral, built in the 1950s, gave the city center the flavor of central Mexico, with its carved towers and elegant dome, but structural problems required its remodeling in the 1970s. The city's population reached some 400,000 by 1970. In 1984, the city had a
radiation incident after a private medical company illegally purchased a radiation therapy unit. It was dismantled, sold to a junkyard and later smelted to produce six thousand tons of
rebar (which is used to reinforce buildings), exposing thousands to radiation. Juárez has grown substantially in recent decades due to a large influx of people moving into the city in search of jobs with the
maquiladoras. more technological firms have moved to the city, such as the
Delphi Corporation Technical Center, the largest in the Western Hemisphere, which employs over 2,000 engineers. Large
slum housing communities called
colonias have become extensive. Juárez has a long, notorious history of
drug trafficking and the intense related violence. Mexico's first homegrown cartel, run by
Ignacia Jasso, was seated in the city, and for a time controlled much of the border drug trade. Today the
Juárez Cartel controls the routes in Juárez. Related violence in the city is responsible for more than 1,000 unsolved
murders of young women from 1993 to 2003. == Geography ==