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El Paso, (-enɛlˈpæsoʊpron) is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States, and lies in far West Texas. In the 2010 census, the city had a population of 649,121. It is the sixth largest city in Texas and the 19th largest city in the United States. Its metropolitan area covers all of El Paso County, whose population in the 2010 census was 800,647. El Paso stands on the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte), across the border from Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. The image to the right shows Downtown El Paso and Juárez, with the Juárez Mountains in the background. The two cities form a combined international metropolitan area, sometimes called Juarez-El Paso, with Juárez being the significantly larger of the two in population. Together they have a combined population of 2 million, with Juárez accounting for 2/3 of the population. 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 present 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 neighboring Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo. The Franklin Mountains extend into El Paso from the north and nearly divide the city into two sections, the western half forming the beginnings of the Mesilla Valley and with the eastern slopes connecting in the central business district at the south end of the mountain range. |