Why Has the El Paso Star on the Mountain Gone Dark and How Long It Will Stay Dark?

El Paso's Star on the Mountain. It’s been a daily part of our evening skyline since April 1993.

But if you've looked towards the Franklins at night recently, you may have noticed the star has gone dark. This time it’s not because of high winds or trespassers vandalizing the iconic landmark.

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Why Has It Gone Dark?

The El Paso Chamber, which is in charge of the maintenance and upkeep of the star, noted in a social media post that the light fixture was turned off on September 12 for renovations.

Renovations will be extensive and revolve around modernizing the landmark by investing in more energy efficient and technologically advanced infrastructure.

How Long Will the Star Remain Dark?

The chamber did not disclose how long the Star was going to remain dark, but if the word ‘extensive’ is any indication it might be a while.

The social media post noted more details and a timeline would be discussed at a press conference on Monday, September 18.

What Could Be Coming

In July of 2020, a representative of the organization El Paso Shining Star told one of the local news stations in a televised interview that his organization and the Chamber were working towards a plan to upgrade from the LED bulbs it is currently outfitted with to RGB LED bulbs.

RGB is an acronym for red, blue and green. RGB LEDs combine the three colors to produce over 16 million hues of light.

What would that mean for our star if that is what they mean by ‘modernizing’ the light monument? "We can turn [it] any color we want. We could have multiple strings that could change different colors. We can make them dance. It's limitless what we can do,” Paul Terry of El Paso Shining Star told the news station at the time.

That would be amazing, but we'll know more about the planned changes next week.