Canutillo is a community located on the east bank of the Rio Grande and on U.S. Highways 80 and 85 about twelve miles northwest of downtown El Paso in northwestern El Paso County. The community is also located near the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.

The story of the town begins when it was established on June 1823, when the Canutillo land grant was assigned to Juan María Ponce De León and twenty-nine other citizens of El Paso del Norte. 

A year later, a small agricultural settlement was established in this town, but Apache raiders forced residents to abandon it in 1833. The site remained vacant until after the arrival of Anglo-American settlers in the mid-1800s. The Canutillo ranch became a principal source of income for James Wiley Magoffin, but in 1855 José Sánchez and others established their ownership as descendants of the original grantees. The state of Texas recognized their claim in 1858, and the land grant was surveyed by Anson Mills two years later. In 1874 a court order divided ownership of the grant among Joseph Magoffin, Josiah F. Crosby, William W. Mills, Anson Mills, John S. Watts, and Sánchez. The Canutillo Townsite and Land Company was chartered in 1909, and a post office was established there two years later. In 1914 Canutillo was identified as a rural post office and had four general stores to serve the surrounding population. The community’s estimated population was 300 in 1925, and later on, the town continued to grow. By the mid-1970s its estimated population was 1,800. That population estimate remained constant until the early 1990s, when it was revised upward to 4,442. Now, the most recent population of the town is at  6,321, this is recorded at the 2010 census.