So I had the delightful privilege of riding back from the Guadalupe Mountains with my friend Greg. Besides serving as the National Register Coordinator for the Texas Historical Commission, Greg has a passion for road side art, African American “Green Guides” sites, and just all kinds of cool stuff.
The NPS park was celebrating the 40th anniversary of the park being established.
Butterfield Trail Marker near Williams Ranch, Guadalupe Mountains. El Capitan is in the background.
It was hard to tell but I learned from some experts on the trip how to identify evidence of the wagon tracks on the Butterfield trail here.
Cool right? Doesn’t look like what most people think of as Texas, but it is.
Besides the trip to Guadelupe Mountains to investigate a possible National Register of Historic Places designation for the Butterfield Overland Mail Route and the related landscape that our friend Julie is working on, Greg was also looking at another designation, for the Bankhead Highway. It is already a big deal in Texas,
“On Friday, June 19, 2009, the Bankhead Highway was designated a Texas Historic Highway as part of the new state Historic Roads and Highways Program. This measure was introduced by State Rep. Carol Kent (District 102, Dallas County). The purpose of this designation is to supplement the Texas Historical Commission’s existing “heritage tourism” programs and to increase interest in the Bankhead Highway.”
Oh how I love infrastructure history and preservation…but that’s for another blog post.
The Bankhead Highway runs straight through El Paso, and the greatest evidence of that is the miles of motels along the route with fantastic signs, some of which can be dated to the 1930s. Here’s a few we stopped to capture on Instagram or my plain old Android phone.
Here’s one of the more interesting motels. It was featured in a Green Guide, which during segregation served as a valuable resource for African Americans seeking safe lodging. Here’s an African American owned motel called La Luz we located along the Old Bankhead Highway right after Ysleta.
African American Travel guide advertising the La Luz Motel which was Black-owned.
After our crazed photo shoot along Alameda and Montana Avenue, we decided to head toward our lunch spot (more on that in another blog post.) But then we saw this:
Sr Benjos Restaurant of El Paso.
Greg said, what? I turned around. Then we turned the car around and snapped this shot.
Just thought I’d post it again…because I couldn’t believe it!
But it gets better, no not really. It gets worse. As we hurriedly snap photos outside, the owner runs outside and straight up to me,and says hey I got to show something. He points right to me, and says you got to see this. Not Greg, but me. he wants to make sure I come inside and see this sitting near the register.
The Latino owner ran outside to explain how important it was that I see this, then joked that it was him as a boy. What?!?
Before I saw this, I had thought that maybe the brown skin tone of the sign outside meant it was actually some Latino figure I didn’t know about. But if that were so, why is this inside the restaurant!?! This is unmistakeably black.
So before I posted this I wanted to do a little online research. Granted I didn’t do any hardcore research but just some basics. I noted a few things. I haven’t been able to find more than a Yelp ad online. And none of the advertisements show these images. Notably, visitors who write about the food (which is supposed to be outstanding by the way), they never mentioned the “decor” or the signage. How is this possible?
So if I am overreacting or don’t understand what I am seeing, please let me know. Otherwise, I have two very different ideas of the African American heritage of El Paso. I say frequently that heritage is the history we choose. I am sure this is not the history El Paso would choose.