Photo of the Day 410

Spanish Church, Texas, 1996

Photograph by Bruce Dale

A peaceful image of the 140-year-old presidio chapel in San Elizario, Texas, belies the restive reality of life along the U.S.-Mexico border. Towns beside the dangerous and polluted 1,250-mile-long (2,000-kilometer-long) Rio Grande don’t always know calm and order.

(Text adapted from and photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, “Tex-Mex,” February 1996, National Geographic magazine)