El Paso Map
El Paso is the far western tip of Texas, on the Rio Grande opposite Ciudad Juarez, with about 682,000 residents in 2024 and a clock an hour behind the rest of the state.
Where is El Paso?
El Paso is at the westernmost corner of Texas, where the state, New Mexico and Mexico meet. It is the only large Texas city on Mountain Time, and it is far closer to the Southwest than to the rest of its own state: about 265 miles south of Albuquerque, roughly 430 miles east of Phoenix, and some 550 miles west of San Antonio — closer to Santa Fe and Phoenix than to its own state capital at Austin.
El Paso at a glance
| State | Texas |
| County | El Paso County |
| Population | 681,723 (2024 Census estimate) |
| Rank among US cities | No. 24 of the 100 largest |
| Time zone | Mountain Time |
| Region | South (West South Central division) |
El Paso sits at No. 24 in the 2024 estimates, 20,527 people behind Washington and 2,801 ahead of Las Vegas. Within Texas it comes sixth of fourteen, behind five others, from Houston down to Austin. Against Texas's 31.29 million residents, though, that is only about 2.2%. It holds about 78% of El Paso County's 875,784 residents.
El Paso in Texas
El Paso County is a small, densely settled county at the end of a long thin arm of Texas; the Texas county map shows the empty Trans-Pecos counties between it and the rest of the state. The nearest Texas city of any size is Midland, more than 250 miles east, so El Paso's real neighbor is Ciudad Juarez, immediately across the river, with which it forms one of the largest binational urban areas on any border. The Texas state page puts the western reach in context.
The pass and the Rio Grande
The name is literal: the Rio Grande cuts a gap between the southern end of the Franklin Mountains and the Sierra de Juarez on the Mexican side, and every route through this stretch of the Chihuahuan Desert — the Camino Real, the railroads, Interstate 10 — funnels through it. The Franklins run right into the middle of the city, so the street grid wraps around a mountain range; Franklin Mountains State Park protects a large block of it inside the city limits. Downstream of El Paso the Rio Grande becomes the international boundary.
Cities near El Paso
Other cities in reach: Albuquerque, Tucson, Phoenix, Lubbock and San Antonio. The US time zones map shows where the Texas time line falls.