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The name Skull Canyon Co. is a nod to the small, hidden community nestled in a canyon just south of the I-10 Freeway in El Paso, Texas. It’s a quiet little neighborhood that’s overlooked by the Smeltertown Cemetery where loved ones of the bygone community of Smeltertown are buried.
But what happened to Smeltertown and how did Skull Canyon come to be?
It began around the late 1800s when Mexican immigrants, including my maternal great grandparents, came to El Paso in search of the American Dream.
They settled in an area along the banks of the Rio Grande River just west of the American Smelting and Refining Company, referred to more commonly as ASARCO.
Many worked for the refinery, while others, like my great grandfather, worked for the Southwestern Portland Cement Co. just down the street. This little “town within a town'' came to be known as Smeltertown and boasted its own post office, church, public elementary school, theater, butcher shop and bakery.
My father remembers living there with his grandparents off and on during his childhood. He remembers going to the Smeltertown Cemetery, known more commonly as La Calavera, with his grandmother to lay flowers on the graves of her two infant boys.
Over the years, descendants of these original Smeltertown settlers would move out of the community and carve their own paths. For those that remained, their small-town way of life would eventually come to a halt in the early 1970s when the Center for Disease Control confirmed lead poisoning in the town’s soil.
Although the refinery continued to operate until 1999, Smeltertown families were forced to move out in 1973 and the town was demolished. Many residents moved to other parts of El Paso or in nearby New Mexico.
My great grandparents settled in the nearby hills of Buena Vista where my grandfather built their new home.
But the only true remnants of the tight-knit community is a quiet little neighborhood of about twenty homes tucked away in Skull Canyon. Known as La Calavera Historical Neighborhood is less than a mile away from the original Smeltertown and is protectively overlooked by the Smeltertown Cemetry where their forefathers were laid to rest.
