Beaumont, Texas

El Paso (Greyhound Station), Texas

Beaumont is a city in and the county seat of Jefferson County, Texas, in the United States, within the Beaumont–Port Arthur Metropolitan Statistical Area. Located in Southeast Texas on the Neches River about 85 miles (137 km) east of Houston (city center to city center), Beaumont had a population of 117,267 at the time of the 2010 census, making it the thirtieth-most populous city in the state of Texas. Beaumont was founded as a town in 1835. The pioneer settlement had an economy based on the development of lumber, farming, and port industries. In 1892, Joseph Eloi Broussard opened the first commercially successful rice mill in the state, stimulating development of rice farming in the area; he also started an irrigation company (since 1933 established as the Lower Neches Valley Authority) to support rice culture. Rice became an important commodity crop in Texas, and is now cultivated in 23 counties.A big change occurred in 1901 with the Spindletop gusher, which demonstrated that a huge oil field lay underneath and adjacent to the city. With Spindletop, several energy companies developed in Beaumont, and some continue. The area rapidly developed as one of the major petro-chemical refining areas in the country. Along with Port Arthur and Orange, Beaumont forms the Golden Triangle, a major industrial area on the Texas Gulf Coast. Beaumont is home of Lamar University, a national Carnegie Doctoral Research university with 14,966 students, including undergraduates and post graduates. Over the years, several corporations have been based in this city, including Gulf States Utilities which had its headquarters in Beaumont until its takeover by Entergy Corporation in 1993. GSU's Edison Plaza headquarters remains the tallest building in Beaumont.

El Paso (; from Spanish, "the pass") is a city and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States, in the far western part of the state. The 2018 population estimate for the city from the U.S. Census was 682,669, making it the 22nd largest city in the United States. Its metropolitan statistical area (MSA) covers all of El Paso and Hudspeth counties in Texas, and has a population of 840,758.El Paso stands on the Rio Grande across the Mexico–United States border from Ciudad Juárez, the most populous city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua with 1.4 million people. Las Cruces, in the neighboring U.S. state of New Mexico, has a population of 215,579. On the U.S. side, the El Paso metropolitan area forms part of the larger El Paso–Las Cruces CSA, with a population of 1,060,397.Bi-nationally, these three cities form a combined international metropolitan area sometimes referred to as the Paso del Norte or the Borderplex. The region of 2.5 million people constitutes the largest bilingual and binational work force in the Western Hemisphere.The city is home to three publicly traded companies, and former Western Refining, now Andeavor. as well as home to the Medical Center of the Americas, the only medical research and care provider complex in West Texas and Southern New Mexico, and the University of Texas at El Paso, the city's primary university. The city hosts the annual Sun Bowl college football post-season game, the second oldest bowl game in the country.El Paso has a strong federal and military presence. William Beaumont Army Medical Center, Biggs Army Airfield, and Fort Bliss call the city home. Fort Bliss is one of the largest military complexes of the United States Army and the largest training area in the United States. Also headquartered in El Paso are the DEA domestic field division 7, El Paso Intelligence Center, Joint Task Force North, United States Border Patrol El Paso Sector, and the U.S. Border Patrol Special Operations Group (SOG). In 2010 and 2018, El Paso received an All-America City Award. El Paso ranked in the top three safest large cities in the United States between 1997 and 2014, including holding the title of safest city between 2011 and 2014.