Most Texans think Texas history starts at the Alamo. 1836.The Texas Revolution. Sam Houston. Independence. But Texas civilization started long before that. The first permanent city in Texas wasn’t Austin, Dallas, Houston, or even San Antonio. It was Ysleta. Founded in 1680 along the Rio Grande near present-day El Paso. That’s nearly 100 years before the American Revolution and more than 150 years before the Alamo. While the East Coast colonies were still struggling to survive, there were already permanent communities in Texas. When Ysleta was founded, Texas wasn’t a state. It wasn’t a republic. It wasn’t even really Texas yet. It was a remote frontier on the edge of civilization. The people who built Ysleta weren’t politicians or planners. They were families fleeing violence during the Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico. They traveled hundreds of miles south looking for a place to survive. No roads. No infrastructure. No government programs. No guarantees. They built homes by hand. They dug irrigation systems from the Rio Grande. They planted crops in desert soil. They created a permanent community where nothing had existed before. At the center of that settlement stood the Ysleta Mission, which still exists today — one of the oldest continuously operating religious sites in America. Think about that for a minute. ...