Lost El Paso Landmarks – Stoner Tree In Album Park Is Gone

It's not often you find a tree that can call itself "legend". Album Park in east El Paso had one though until a recent thunderstorm took it out after decades of shading the park.

READ MORE: Abandoned El Paso Country Club

"Stoner Tree" was one of the tallest trees in Album Park and, some have said, was about 100 years old. That's kinda doubtful but, we'll let it go for now. It absolutely did stand for many decades though, acting as a place for folks to seek shade and for them to ... well, it didn't get that nickname by accident.

I can't say I ever helped Stoner Tree with that nickname but there are several trees in the northeast and a couple of caves that could totally claim that title thanks to me and my friends. In Stoner Tree's honor, we should plant a new tree in Sunland Park and start a Sunland Park "park" among all the dispensaries.

Other Lost El Paso Landmarks

Nature has taken a few other local landmarks from us like Mountain Shadow Lake which eventually dried up and a couple of other lakes that either dried up or were intentionally drained and built over.

Intentional Destruction

We've taken down a few iconic, manmade landmarks ourselves over the years. Remember when we dropped the Asarco towers? Or that time we demolished El Paso's former city hall? (We've actually had several City Halls'.)

The site where City Hall once stood is now home to the El Paso Chihuahuas. The stadium was built pretty quick, relatively speaking, but you can watch it go up in less than 2 minutes in this video.

Pretty cool, huh?

Accidental Destruction

The DeSoto Hotel holds a huge place in El Paso history, as a hotel that dated back to 1905, for being haunted AF and for being lost in one of El Paso's biggest structural fires. It was pretty bad, (it took 14 units and around 70 firefighters to put it out), but as big as it was, it still wasn't El Paso's largest fire.