Why I chose this topic:

I chose this topic because I think it fits really well into the encounter, exploration, and
exchange theme. I also thought that it was extremely interesting that the city of El Paso
had decided to put alligators into San Jacinto plaza and wondered how El Paso
provided the maintenance and feeding of the alligators and protected them from harm.
How I conducted my research:
First, I skimmed through a couple of books I found on my parents' bookshelf, by Leon
Metz. They are both history books, one of them is a timeline of El Paso History; the
other is a history book on El Paso places. They provided a foundation for me to start
laying out information on this topic.
Next, I began exploring articles and photographs on San Jacinto Plaza, and started to
piece information together.
I then interviewed Gary Williams, an El Paso Community Foundation Senior Program
Officer and history buff who was interested in San Jacinto Plaza, and he told me useful
tools that I could use in my research. He also gave me an incredible amount of
information and his thoughts and stories on and about the plaza.
I then began creating a website about San Jacinto Plaza.
How my project relates to the theme:
Exploration, Encounter, and Exchange:
When Anson Mills began planning downtown El Paso, he encountered a plot of land
with a few scraggly trees and bushes, an adobe house, and a blacksmith shop, and
decided to make it the towns public square. Anson Mills and City Marshall James
Gillette, along with some of his prisoners, burned down all the mesquite in the square
and razed the house and the blacksmith shop. The town paid developer Fisher
Satterthwaite six hundred dollars to design the park. He made a gazebo and pond, and
planted some trees while surrounding it with a fence; and San Jacinto Plaza was born.
When exploring ideas for the new town square, it is rumored that Fisher Satterthwaite
brought two alligators in a shoebox from Louisiana in the mid-1890s. He surrounded
the pond at San Jacinto with a rock wall and placed the reptiles inside. The El Pasoans
feared that the alligators might freeze in the winter, so during the night groups of men
grabbed the reptiles, wrapped them up in burlap sacks and took them to the business
across the street to put them next to the potbelly stoves in the back of the building. In
the morning, someone took them back to the pond.

In the 1890s, Rudolph Eckmeier, a New Yorker, stopped by the Plaza and described it
as, filled with people, engaged in endless discussions. They would argue for hours
about the best way to resolve problems, or their opinion of the solutions to world affairs.
This exchange of ideas has played a role in shaping our community. San Jacinto Plaza
has been used for everything - from meetings, to celebrations, to lectures - ever since.