The history of Socorro, located on the Southern Pacific Railroad and State Highway 20 about ten miles southeast of downtown El Paso, begins in 1680, when Governor Antonio de Otermín and Father Francisco de Ayeta led Spanish and Piro Indian refugees fleeing the New Mexican Pueblo Indian Revolt to the El Paso area.

Mission Socorro, properly titled Nuestra Señora de Limpia Concepcion de Los Piros de Socorro del Sur (Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception of the Piros of Socorro of the South), derives its name from the Socorro Mission of Socorro, New Mexico, the ancestral home of the Piro Indians who came to the El Paso Valley in the wake of the Pueblo Rebellion. Many of the parishioners refer to the mission as San Miguel (St. Michael's), in honor of their patron saint, or as La Purisima (The Most Pure), a synonymous abbreviation of its full name.

Scholars disagree on a founding date for the mission. Piro Indians and Franciscan missionaries arrived in the El Paso valley in 1680, but the exact location of their initial settlement has never been determined. While construction of most of what is the present church began in 1684 and completed in 1692, it is known that at least one other permanent structure had already been constructed and abandoned because of Apache attacks. Archaeological excavations to the southeast of the present structure have uncovered what is believed to be the foundation of the original structure.

Like Mission Ysleta, Mission Socorro suffered a series of disasters as a result of the flooding of the Rio Grande. When the 1692 structure was destroyed by the flooding river in 1740, it was replaced four years later. When the structure was also destroyed by the flooding river in 1828, it was replaced in 1843 by what is now the main part of the present structure. Later, the bell tower was added, and in 1873, a larger transept and sanctuary were completed.

The Socorro church was administered by the Franciscans until 1852 when the church was placed under secular (civil) authority. In 1872, Mission Socorro was assigned to the Jesuit Order which administered the mission for nearly one hundred and twenty years.

The town of Socorro was a part of Mexico from 1821 to 1848, at which point it became a part of the Texas. For the rest of the nineteenth century Socorro remained a small farming community. Locally constructed acequias, or canals, supplied water for agricultural crops, which included vineyards, fruit trees, and cereal grains. In June, 1862, the people of Socorro threatened the retreating Confederate forces, which retaliated by killing several local citizens and firing a cannon ball into the mission wall. The town, together with other Rio Grande communities, played an active role in county politics until 1881, when the railroads arrived and shifted the political power structure to El Paso.

The construction of Elephant Butte Dam on the Rio Grande in 1916 resulted in an agricultural revolution that transformed a family-based system into one featuring large-scale cotton production on plantation-sized estates. Small farms, manual labor, and vineyard culture gave way to large landholdings where farm machinery was used in the cultivation of cotton and alfalfa. By 1920 cotton was beginning to rival copper as the Socorro area's principal industry.