Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in El Paso, AR

El Paso is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in southwestern White County, Arkansas — a tiny rural settlement, not the famous Texas border city of the same name.

Its name is Spanish for "the pass," referring to a small gap in the hills on the community's northern edge, and in its early settlement days the spot was known as Peach Orchard Gap.

The Census Bureau first listed El Paso as a census-designated place in the 2020 census, which counted 267 residents.

The community lies on the southern slope of Cadron Ridge along U.S. Highway 64 and Arkansas Highway 5, with much of it strung out along Bull Creek in El Paso Township.

The historic Southwest Trail, also called the Old Military Road, passed through El Paso, and by the 1830s more than 80 percent of the Arkansas territory's population had entered the region by that route.

Settlers arrived in the 1830s, and El Paso entertained hopes of becoming the county seat — a town was even planned around a prospective courthouse — but when White County was created on October 23, 1835, Searcy was chosen as the seat instead.

A Baptist church founded by five members in 1848 had grown to more than 200 members by 1880, making it the largest church in White County at the time.

By 1900 El Paso was a farm trade center of more than 800 people, but the Great Depression, foreclosures, and new highways shrank it, and its school was consolidated with the Beebe schools by the 1950s.

Two El Paso properties, the David Doyle House and the El Paso Bank, were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991, and the 1894 bank building now houses a volunteer-run community library.

One-time El Paso resident Virginia Lillian Morris Johnson became the first woman to run for the office of governor of Arkansas in 1968.