Early history

The most prominent headquarters of the Society were located in the Bassett Tower in downtown El Paso. The Bassett Building was specifically built with this purpose in mind, and was named for Oscar T. Bassett. He was a businessman and financier that contributed in the creation of the El Paso’s First National Bank and the Texas and Pacific Railways.

According to secret documentation that has been found, it has been revealed that Bassett held the rank of Digitus Maximus from 1884 until his death in 1898. The many chambers and passageways that still exist under the Bassett Tower were used for secret rituals. One such ritual involved the filling of the Bassett Tower’s subterranean swimming pool completely with lemonade.

About the Bassett Tower:

This building was considered the city’s first skyscraper.  It was designed by a famous architect Henry C. Trost, known as the architect of “arid America,” his commissions exist throughout Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

This building construction was finished in 1930.  The Bassett tower is unique for its architectural design, based on Art Deco (popular style in the late 1920s and 1930s).  Art deco was influenced for the classic style used in Paris.  The tower’s single most striking feature is the fact that it was designed as a finished building from all sides.  At this period that type of construction was unusual.  Another characteristic is its main lobby’s doors made of bronze.  Ten eagle sentries guard the 15th floor.  The mustachioed face over the main entrance is reputed to be that of Henry C. Trost himself.

Henry Trost was known to be a member of the Trigger Finger Lemonade Society, at least as early as 1908. The Bassett Tower was intended to be the centerpiece in a vast, cryptic Trigger Finger Society puzzle, encoded in the very buildings Trost designed. Study of Trost gives some insight into the goals of the society; the creation of a new state with El Paso as its capital:

"The unification of the state of Sacramento, its capital El Paso, and [my architecture will be] a formula for regional identity, relative advantage, and strength. Never has the area melded into the priorities or politics of Santa Fe or Austin."