1908 El Paso, Texas Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps and Atlas

This is a complete color facsimile of Insurance Maps of El Paso, Texas, published by the Sanborn Map Company of New York in 1908. All ninety-two sheets are reproduced in full color from the original survey, together with the engraved title plate, the full index, and the key map.

Sanborn fire insurance maps are the most detailed record that survives of an American city's built fabric. Each sheet shows individual buildings block by block, color-coded by construction — and El Paso's key carries a category the eastern volumes do not: adobe, alongside fireproof construction, iron buildings, brick with metal cornice, frame, stone front, and iron-clad. The sheets record story heights, fire walls, iron doors and shutters, window openings by story, stables, brick and iron chimneys, steam boilers, automatic sprinklers, automatic fire alarms, independent electric plants, hydrants, and surveyed elevations.

The key map is a border document. It runs from the Fort Bliss Military Reservation and the northeast mesa grid down through the business district to the Rio Grande, with the international boundary drawn across the bottom of the sheet and Ciudad Juárez, State of Chihuahua, Mexico beyond it. Concordia and Evergreen cemeteries, Highland Park, Altura Park and East El Paso are all covered, and the fire limits are marked in red.

A full street index, a "Specials" index of named firms and institutions, and a separate block index — block number to sheet number — make it possible to find any address, business or block. The Specials record a smelter and railroad town: the Consolidated Kansas City Smelting & Refining Co., the Federal Copper Co. smelter, the Mine and Smelter Supply Co. and the Pass City Foundry; the depots, shops and roundhouses of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, the El Paso & Southwestern, the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio, the Southern Pacific and the Texas & Pacific; the Bassett, Burton Lingo, Caples-Williams and Galbraith-Foxworth lumber yards; the Brunswick-Balke-Collender wood works; Krakauer, Zork & Moye's hardware house; the Anheuser-Busch, San Antonio and El Paso brewing depots; the Carnegie Public Library, the Chamber of Commerce, City Hall, and the County Court House and Jail; the Orndorff, Grand Central, Angelus, St. Regis, Plaza and a dozen more hotels; and the city's Mexican congregations and schools — Iglesia Mexicana del Sur, the Mexican Congregational and Methodist Episcopal churches, San Ignacio Catholic Church, San Jacinto School and the Aoy Public School.

The key map also carries the underwriters' report for 1908: a population of 45,000 on a datum plane 3,600 feet above sea level; water pumped from fourteen bored wells at the Fort Bliss Mesa six miles northeast; 50.94 miles of pipe and 198 triple hydrants; and a fire department of one chief, two assistants, twenty-two paid men and 160 volunteers across four stations. The surveyors also noted that the southern portion of the town, on sheets 61 to 66, was chiefly built of poles plastered with mud, with dirt roofs.

Reproduced from the copy in the Library of Congress. An essential reference for genealogists, house historians, and collectors of El Paso and West Texas history.

96 pages. 8.5" x 11.25". Full color. Hardcover.

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