The area at the top of Rim Road is home to stately mansions, quiet streets, an awesome park and stunning views. It didn't exactly start out that way though ...

Rim Road, skirts the edge of the Franklin Mountains and offers an incredible view of El Paso, Juarez, the Upper Valley, and New Mexico. The streets are quiet and lined with beautifully built homes ranging in size from small and quaint to full-blown mansions. It is absolutely one of the most beautiful 'hoods in El Paso.

In the early 1900's though, it was a disease-infested, poverty stricken, hellhole that was ultimately deemed a "public nuisance"by the city of El Paso.

In the early 1900s, it was known as Stormsville. A local attorney named D. Storms, purchased a lot of land there to rehome refugee's from the great Rio Grande river flood of 1897. It made sense to move peeps to higher ground after so many lost everything they owned. Storms' rates were low and his rules for living there were simple.

According to the El Paso History Alliance, the terms for residents were simple: They "had to be employed, they had to be able to build their own adobe homes, and they could not have a police record". They also had to have a certain degree of patience ...  or desperation ... as the amenities of the development were even simpler than its rules.

Basically, the place sucked. Goats wandered the area freely and dogs were said to outnumber the humans. The alleys were used as sewer systems, manure piles were everywhere, the litter was out of control and "freelance" hogs roamed at will.  At its peak, Stormsville consisted of 75 houses, 400 people and had a grand total of 4 toilets.

Residents of nearby Kern Place raised hell about the place which led to the city of El Paso condemning the entire area and kicking everybody out. Storms ... reportedly a very kind man who didn't pester his tenants for rent, wouldn't evict peeps too poor to pay and would offer free legal advice ... sold the area outright in 1928.

He died less than 10 years later, in 1936.

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