(This is an excerpt from my book, “Can Travel Restore My Faith in My Country.” It is part two of the series — (part one link), which starts with my departure from Alpine and traveling to El Paso by train.

El Paso, 857 Miles

For most Texans, El Paso is not a city so much as a number. It is the highway sign you pass heading west out of Beaumont, somewhere past the Louisiana line, right after the State of Texas Visitor Center welcomes you in. For some Texans, that border crossing feels less like entering another state and more like entering another country entirely.

The sign itself is unmistakable: standard highway green, white lettering, a thin white border. A little research told me the font is called Clearview — designed specifically for legibility at highway speed, which makes sense given how many thousands of drivers glance up at it every day without ever slowing down.

The Sign Everyone Remembers

“El Paso 857” sits on the top line. “Beaumont 23” sits just below it. Ask almost any Texan, and they will recognize this sign immediately — many can even recall the mileage within a few miles of accuracy. I saw it constantly growing up, heading west on I-10, usually on the way home to Houston from a Florida beach trip. Six hundred miles to Florida had already felt like a lot. El Paso, 857 miles?

You could drive that entire distance and never leave Texas. When El Paso finally landed on my itinerary, I wanted it to become something more than a number on a green sign. How many drivers pass “El Paso 857”, “Beaumont 23” every year, shake their heads, and keep driving? Now I find myself traveling to El Paso by train.

Getting There: The Landscape Changes

Leaving Alpine, the train heads west and the terrain flattens out. Mountains linger on the horizon, but they no longer crowd the tracks the way they did between Del Rio and Alpine, where the land rolled and the rock formations pressed in close on both sides. Alpine sits a little over 200 miles from El Paso, and shortly after departure, the route passes through Marfa — famous, but not a scheduled stop.

Why the Train Stops in the Middle of Nowhere

One thing that surprised me about train travel: the pace is anything but steady. The train continually adjusts its speed to coordinate with freight traffic sharing the same track, sometimes slowing to a crawl, sometimes stopping completely to let another train pass. When that happens, there is a strange visual illusion that sets in as the other train rushes by inches away. For a second, you genuinely cannot tell — which one of us is moving?

A Landscape Straight Out of a Western

Past Van Horn, the scenery shifts again. Near Sierra Blanca, a strange formation called Round Top Mountain rises to 5,700 feet out of otherwise flat, empty land — it looks more like a photo from the surface of Mars than anything I expected in West Texas. Same state, completely different planet. I could not shake the feeling I was watching a Spaghetti Western unfold outside the window.

Arriving at El Paso’s Union Depot

I arrive at Union Depot, El Paso’s Amtrak station and a National Register of Historic Places building dating to around 1905. There is something grounding about these preserved old train stations. According to greatamericanstations.com, (insert link) sunlight streams through the Diocletian, or “thermal,” windows that ring the upper level of the central waiting room, and the three-story space greets arriving passengers with a patterned marble floor, pillars and pilasters, and a second-story gallery.

I investigated it further and learned that Diocletian windows — the large, semicircular style — originated in the public baths of ancient Rome. The station’s main hall also holds the same style of wooden church pews I would see in Amtrak stations across the rest of the trip. My ride is waiting, adjusted for the earlier delay, and my time in El Paso officially begins.

An Unexpected Geography Lesson

What I did not expect from El Paso was a geography lesson. I understood, abstractly, that the city sits at the intersection of Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico — but understanding it on a map and feeling it while driving the freeway that separates El Paso from Ciudad Juárez are two vastly different things. There is no buffer, no gap. Just a border wall between two cities that function, in every practical sense, as one.

El Paso also touches New Mexico to the west and north, and New Mexico shares its own southern border with Mexico. Stand in the right spot in El Paso and you can see mountains belonging to two different states and a different country, all from the same vantage point. On one hike in El Paso, I looked out and realized I was staring straight into a New Mexico mountain range.

Next Stop: Tucson

El Paso stopped being a number on a highway sign somewhere during my time there. It became a real and mystical place — mountains catching the color of the desert sun, a city built at the seam of three borders. From here, the train continues west toward Tucson.