The Women of Smeltertown
Once there was a place called Smeltertown, and it was known as the largest industrial city on the banks of the Rio Grande. The smokestacks of the American Smelting and Refining Company, which polluted the air for three miles in every direction, grew so tall over the decades that they became a landmark just inside the El Paso side of the US-Mexico border. In a community of small adobe houses, many with dirt floors and without indoor plumbing, both the men employed at the smelter and the women who raised families and made homes there form the history of Smeltertown.

Through interviews with the women and their now middle-aged children, the realities of everyday life in Smeltertown are revealed—as is the strength of the women who forged a community and preserved a culture in these primitive conditions. Current photographs of the interviewees and historical photographs of Smeltertown illustrate the history of an area not even native El Pasoans knew.
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The Women of Smeltertown
Once there was a place called Smeltertown, and it was known as the largest industrial city on the banks of the Rio Grande. The smokestacks of the American Smelting and Refining Company, which polluted the air for three miles in every direction, grew so tall over the decades that they became a landmark just inside the El Paso side of the US-Mexico border. In a community of small adobe houses, many with dirt floors and without indoor plumbing, both the men employed at the smelter and the women who raised families and made homes there form the history of Smeltertown.

Through interviews with the women and their now middle-aged children, the realities of everyday life in Smeltertown are revealed—as is the strength of the women who forged a community and preserved a culture in these primitive conditions. Current photographs of the interviewees and historical photographs of Smeltertown illustrate the history of an area not even native El Pasoans knew.
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The Women of Smeltertown

The Women of Smeltertown

by Marcia Hatfield Daudistel, Mimi R. Gladstein
The Women of Smeltertown

The Women of Smeltertown

by Marcia Hatfield Daudistel, Mimi R. Gladstein

Paperback

$24.00 
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Overview

Once there was a place called Smeltertown, and it was known as the largest industrial city on the banks of the Rio Grande. The smokestacks of the American Smelting and Refining Company, which polluted the air for three miles in every direction, grew so tall over the decades that they became a landmark just inside the El Paso side of the US-Mexico border. In a community of small adobe houses, many with dirt floors and without indoor plumbing, both the men employed at the smelter and the women who raised families and made homes there form the history of Smeltertown.

Through interviews with the women and their now middle-aged children, the realities of everyday life in Smeltertown are revealed—as is the strength of the women who forged a community and preserved a culture in these primitive conditions. Current photographs of the interviewees and historical photographs of Smeltertown illustrate the history of an area not even native El Pasoans knew.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780875657004
Publisher: TCU Press
Publication date: 11/05/2018
Pages: 192
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

MARCIA HATFIELD DAUDISTEL is most recently the coauthor, with writer and photographer Bill Wright, of Authentic Texas: People of the Big Bend. MIMI REISEL GLADSTEIN is the author or coeditor of seven books. In 2011 she was named to the El Paso Historical Society Hall of Honor and to the El Paso Commission for Women Hall of Fame.

Table of Contents

"The Blue I Loved" Benjamin Alire Sáenz viii

Foreword Yolanda Chávez-Leyva xi

Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Bienvenidos 7

Chapter 2 Making Our Homes 15

Chapter 3 In and Out of the Kitchen 43

Chapter 4 Hard Times 65

Chapter 5 Food for the Spirit 75

Chapter 6 Adios 95

Afterword Howard Campbell 103

Notes 109

About the Authors 111

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