The Star on the Mountain

If you're ever in El Paso after dark, look up at these mountains, and you'll see it — a giant star, outlined in lights, glowing high on the face of the Franklins over the whole city. It's one of the most beloved sights in El Paso, and there's real heart in its story. Let me tell you.

It started back in nineteen forty, when the local electric company decided to string lights on the mountainside above the city in the shape of a great five-pointed star, for the holiday season. And when they first lit it up, that Thanksgiving-time, the whole city looked up and loved it — a star of light, shining out over the desert, over El Paso and over Juárez both, over two cities and two countries at once, a simple sign of hope and peace and welcome hanging in the dark above the border. And the people loved it so much they never really wanted to take it down. Over the years it grew — bigger and bigger, until today it's a huge thing, hundreds of feet across, thousands of lights, said to be one of the largest illuminated stars in the world — and eventually they just started leaving it lit all year round.

And it's come to mean something. That star has shone through good times and hard ones, a steady light over this border community. There have been times they lit it in special vigil — kept it burning night after night after night through anxious times, like when Americans were held hostage overseas, or to welcome soldiers home from war — the whole city looking up at the same light, together, hoping together. Because that's what it is, really: a light that both cities can see, that belongs to nobody and everybody, shining over the river and the line on the map as if to say the thing this whole border place seems to say — that we're all under the same sky, on both sides, neighbors in the same desert night. So come back after dark sometime, and look up, and see the star on the mountain. Roll on.