El Paso Firsts – Times El Chuco Led The Way

El Paso is a beautiful city; rich in history, steeped in different cultures and loaded with cool things to do, see and experience. An "O.G." and a true O.I. - Original Influencer.

El Paso has seen its fair share of "firsts" throughout its history and has always been a true trendsetter. Among other things, we're the first city to have a huge star on the mountain, the first with a Dubba G and the only city with a "you". We're on a roll, huh?

From day one, El Paso was on the cutting edge of things and could, along with El Chuco, Star City and "the 915", add "El Primero", (the first), to its list of nicknames.

What Did El Paso Do First?

El Paso first beat everybody to the punch with the first Thanksgiving celebration. Forget the Pilgrims, Juan De Onate partied with local tribes along the Rio Grande with fish and fresh game in 1598 near what is now San Elizario.

Racial Firsts For El Paso

El Paso is a very warm and friendly city where segregation and racism have never really had all that much of a foothold. A couple of examples:

• In 1955, El Paso was the first Texas city to vote out segregation in public schools.
• In 1957, we elected the nations first Hispanic mayor, Raymond Telles. That also made him the first "Mexican American" to ever be Mayor of a major, American city.
• In 1966, UTEP, then Texas Western College, Coach Don Haskins tore down the college sports color barrier by starting 5 Black players against an all white team from Kentucky. If you want to know more about that historic moment, watch "Glory Road"

What El Paso Shouldn't Have Done First

In my opinion anyway, we blew it in 1915 when we became the first city to criminalize marijuana. Yep, prohibition started right here. Ironically, it's pretty much ended about 20 feet outside the city limits in Sunland Park, Chaparral and the rest of New Mexico.

READ MORE: New Mexico's 2nd Largest Dispensary Is In Sunland Park

I disagree with this, first of all, because, as you probably already know, I'm fine with legal marijuana. Even moreso though, I'm sad to say, is that the original laws against marijuana were racially motivated. The man, trying to keep us down ...

El Paso wasn't always anti-racism and initial laws against smoking pot were really intended to control the local Mexican population. Really. Just as opium was originally criminalized to keep the Chinese in check.

Except for that last one though, El Pasoans can be pretty proud of all the times they showed everybody else the way.