This article was originally published in the February 2010 issue of Tumbleweed Times:
The first baby alligators arrived in El Paso in a box. According to the story, they were a gift, sent from someone in Louisiana. This was back in the 1800s when El Paso was growing from a dusty pioneer town to a busy city. A storekeeper kept the baby alligators in a barrel. When the reptiles got too big for the barrel, it was time to find another place for them. “Why not put them in the pond in the center of San Jacinto [Ha-SEEN-to] Plaza?” someone suggested. And that’s what they did.
The plan worked
From the beginning, the gators loved the pond. And the people of El Paso loved the gators. In those days, shoppers from El Paso and Juarez crowded the downtown streets. Trolley cars and city buses brought people to town. The people walked to the movie theatre, or the department stores, or the El Paso Public Library. Along the way, they stopped to watch the slow-moving reptiles in the pond.
The alligators ate two pounds of raw hamburger meat or liver a day. They grew big and fat. They laid eggs. In time, there were seven alligators in the pond in the center of town.
During warm summer days, the gators took long, slow walks around their pond. When they yawned, they showed their pointy, white teeth. They slept with their tails dipped in the green water and their fat tummies on the grass. But mostly, they stared back at the many adults and children who stood watching on the opposite side of the wall.
During the winter, the alligators stayed inside a rock cave in the center of the pond.
The alligators lived in the plaza for 80 years. The people called the park “Alligator Plaza.”
New home at the zoo
In the end, some hoodlums were causing problems for the alligators. The reptiles were in danger. In 1965, the remaining alligators were moved to the El Paso Zoo where they would be safe. The last alligator died of old age in the 1970s.
Artist Luis Jimenez built a giant fiberglass alligator sculpture that is now in the middle of the plaza in downtown El Paso. It is in the very same spot where the real alligators once napped in the warm sunshine.
In the sculpture, the four alligators seem to be frozen in time as they leap from the base of the sculpture. Two of the alligators have wide-open mouths, showing sharp, white teeth.
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I spent my formative years (6th grade through high school - EPHS '58) in El Paso. I rode the bus often and one of my strongest memories of El Paso is the Plaza and the alligator "pond". It was elegant and unique and interesting. In later years visiting El Paso I mourned the loss of the alligators and the presence of cold brick walls. Bring back the old park and the alligators.
ReplyDeleteOlga Bornstein Wise - now of Austin, Texas