Van Horn, Texas
HISTORY
Welcome to Van Horn, Texas
Home Of John Madden's Favorite Mexican Restaurant.
Van Horn, Texas is located in Culberson County at the intersection of Interstate Highway 10 & US Highway 90, and is the county seat. The town is named in honor of Lt. James Judson Van Horn, who was sent to Lobo, Texas to command an army garrison that protected the water wells and was taken prisoner by the Confederates in 1861. Van Horn is the westernmost incorporated community in Texas that is in the Central Time Zone.
PHOTOS
Sights Around Van Horn, Texas
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Hotel El Capitan
Hotel El Capitan was built by the Gateway Hotel Chain, led by El Pasoan Charles Bassett, and opened in 1930 in Van Horn, Texas, on the Bankhead Highway.
The hotel, designed by famed architect Henry Charles Trost and constructed by McKee Construction Company, is essentially an identical floor plan of its sister hotel, The Hotel Paisano, in Marfa. In addition to both of those hotels, Gateway Hotels also built grand hotels in Lordsburg, New Mexico, Carlsbad, New Mexico, and El Paso, Texas.
Charles Bassett’s goal was to encourage tourism within 200 miles of El Paso, Texas, and the area was now home to new national parks: Carlsbad Caverns, Guadalupe, and Big Bend National Parks. Van Horn’s location on the Bankhead Highway, the first transcontinental national highway, put Hotel El Capitan in the crosshairs of prosperity until Interstate 10 was built in the 1970s, and the Interstate bypassed the Interstate town.
Have you ever stayed in a historic hotel?
