YSLETA

town, El Paso county, extreme western Texas, U.S., near the Rio Grande. Incorporated in 1955, it was later annexed by El Paso, of which it is now a southeastern section. Regarded as the oldest settlement within the present boundaries of Texas, Ysleta was founded in 168182 by Spanish padres and Christian Indians who, because of a Pueblo Indian uprising, had fled from their settlements along the upper Rio Grande in the region of La Ysleta (an alternate spelling for the Spanish isleta ) in what is now New Mexico. The refugees first sought protection of the Spanish fort El Paso del Norte (now Juarez, Mex., across the river) and then moved to the present site to found Ysleta del Sur and build the Mission Nuestro Seora del Carmen (1682), the oldest mission in Texas, now largely reconstructed. The Ysleta section of El Paso today is characterized by whitewashed old adobe buildings standing between modern structures. The Tigua (Tiwa) Indians maintain a museum and an arts and crafts centre in Ysleta; many of them are direct descendants of the Indians who fled the Pueblo revolt. A small stretch of irrigated land just east of the mission is claimed to be the oldest continuously cultivated plot in the United States; originally plowed in 1681, it first yielded corn (maize) and later grapes and a high grade of Egyptian long-staple cotton.