Although human habitation of the area began thousands of years ago, the Tanpachoa people are the first known residents in this portion of the Río Grande. During his journey west from the Gulf Coast to the Pacific Ocean in the 1530s, Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca probably sighted the pass created by the Río Grande through the Franklin Mountains. Spanish-American explorer Juan de Oñate later visited the site in 1598 and named it El Paso del Río del Norte (The Pass of the River of the North). A mission was founded at the site of modern Ciudad Juárez in 1659. As a result of the Pueblo revolt of 1680 against the Spanish in New Mexico, whites and some Christianized Tigua and Piro peoples escaped to the south, where they established missions and settlements at Socorro and Ysleta. Ysleta, now a part of El Paso, is the oldest continuously occupied settlement in Texas.
Modern El Paso emerged from four early settlements in the vicinity, the oldest of which dates to 1827. Following the Mexican War (1846-1848) and the discovery of gold in California in 1849, El Paso's early economy was augmented by its role as a stopping point for travelers heading west, by cattle drives to California, by the establishment of a military post in 1849 (eventually named Fort Bliss), and by the city's position as a major stop on the Butterfield Overland Mail Route. During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Confederate troops occupied Fort Bliss but retreated to San Antonio in 1862 after being defeated in New Mexico. The city incorporated in 1873. In 1877 a dispute concerning the imposition of fees for the removal of salt from previously public lakes precipitated the Salt War. The Texas Rangers, a special law enforcement group, were eventually called into El Paso to stop the violence.
