El Pasoans hope to preserve landmarks

The city of El Paso declared May Preservation Month on the Mission Trail and are hoping to educate residents about our local history. Some El Pasoans are using it to promote the preservation of our landmarks.

“We have enormous treasures of historic significance in El Paso,” said Nestor Valencia, a preservation advocate and former city planner.

Valencia is one of many El Pasoans working to help protect local landmarks. They say just like the missions have lasted for hundreds of years people should remember other, more contemporary, buildings in El Paso have had an important impact on the city and shouldn’t be forgotten and allowed to waste away.

“We have a term for that, it’s called demolition by neglect,” explained Alfonso Tellez, another advocate.

“The Kress building is in danger, another building is the Bassett Tower, and several other building that are in the path of destruction if someone doesn’t step up and save those,” Valencia said.

They say the key to preserving buildings central to El Paso history lies in more than just the government; the buildings can be saved by the city’s own people

“If the community doesn’t get involved with it then you’re not going to save a lot of treasures,” Valencia said.

If you’d like to learn more about the historic buildings in our city and how you can help the preservation efforts there will be events happening all month.

The full schedule is available here.