El Paso has a number of nicknames. “The 915″, “Sun City” and “El Chuco” among others – ever wonder where those nicknames came from? Sit tight, I gotcha’ …
Throughout its history, El Paso has had many nicknames like the “six shooter capital of the world”. That one stemmed from the fact that El Paso had a zillion gunfights in the “wild west” days. Thankfully, things settled down and that name faded away.
I’m a history buff and and I know El Paso history pretty well. I learned some of our nickname history from relatives, some from books and some from simply being around as they were coined.
El Paso Nicknames Explained
The ones I was around to see come into existence are “Star City” and “the 915“. Both are pretty self explanatory really – “915” is El Paso’s area code and became a popular nickname thanks, (mostly) to El Pasoan Khalid who sang about it in “American Teen” and NFL player Aaron Jones who regularly uses his fingers to display the digits when he scores.
Star City is the most recent one and came about, duh, once the city of El Paso decided to keep the star on the mountain lit all year. It used to only be lit at Christmas.
The Sun City
El Paso gets over 300 days of sunny weather every year, ’nuff said. This one got popular as a tourist slogan in the early 80’s but it goes back even farther. It first popped up in the early 1920’s, also as a tourist slogan, as “the city where the sun comes for winter”.
El Chuco
This is the good, (and most popular), one…