PAISANO, TEXAS. Paisano was twelve miles east of Marfa and one-half mile west of Paisano Pass, in northeastern Presidio County near the Brewster county line. It became a station on the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway in early 1882, when the construction crew reached there from El Paso. When the Paisano siding was built, its elevation of 5,074.1 feet made it the highest railroad station in Texas and the highest one on the GH&SA and its affiliated lines between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Portland, Oregon. Paisano (Spanish for "countryman") was the scene of a train accident on July 8, 1921, when a west-bound freight train exploded and killed the engineer, E. F. Bohlman. When the GH&SA became the Texas and New Orleans Railroad in 1934, Paisano remained a station. By 1961, when the T&NO merged with the Southern Pacific, Paisano had been abandoned by the railroad.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: S. G. Reed, A History of the Texas Railroads (Houston: St. Clair, 1941; rpt., New York: Arno, 1981). Terrell County Heritage Commission, Terrell County, Texas (San Angelo: Anchor, 1978).
