ABSTRACT
The urban area of El Paso del Norte is an unusual point where much wider historical, social, cultural, and economic systems overlap and interact with one another. Patterns of urban growth are also tied closely to the physical environment. The contemporary spatial pattern of urbanization at the Pass of the North represents the most development in a dynamic process of urbanization that extends back more than 300 years. The pattern of urbanization at El Paso del Norte was dramatically altered by forces set in motion by the establishment of the Rio Grande as an international boundary between Mexico and the United States and by the discovery of gold in California during the late 1840s. War, revolution, and social change produced both direct and indirect impacts on urbanization at the pass during the second decade of the twentieth century. The tremendous twentieth-century population growth of Ciudad Juarez continued unabated in the post-war era.
