C.S.A. Salt Works

The saltworks began with a family from Tennessee. In 1852 David and Gideon Cowan and their mother, Ruth, arrived and developed a salt bed near the Colorado River into a successful business, known as the Bluffton-Tow Salt Works and, for its wartime service, as the Confederate States of America Salt Works. The works ran until after the Civil War, with a sawmill in the same area, and in 1871 the salt works cyclone destroyed the operation. The water over the site today is Lake Buchanan, which at its spillway crest covers 23,200 acres and holds 992,000 acre-feet.

What the plaque says

C.S.A. Salt Works Located between Tow Valley and Old Bluffton, 15 miles NE. Since 1935 under Lake Buchanan. During Civil War made salt for table, curing meat and hides, feeding cavalry horses. A day's boiling in 100 iron, 250-gallon kettles produced 20 to 30 bushels of salt. Cooled, sacked and hauled out, this met Texas' wartime shortages. First Llano County district court was held at salt works. Stagecoach stop was nearby. Brine here was from Cambrian sea waters trapped 500 million years ago in sand and strata. Indians led first settler here. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 3.5 mi
  A free federal hatchery below Inks Dam on the Colorado, with thirty production ponds that draw birds and a look at how fish are raised from egg to harvest.
• Inks Lake State Park — 4.3 mi
  A state park on a constant-level lake of the Colorado, between Buchanan and Inks dams, with pink granite and gneiss at the water and CCC work along Park Road 4.
• Longhorn Cavern State Park — 6.6 mi
  A cave carved by an underground river in the Hill Country, cleared of mud by hand in the 1930s and reached down 52 stone steps on a guided tour.
• Llano County Courthouse Square — 14 mi
  The 1893 Romanesque courthouse on Llano's square, built after a fire at the height of a boom that was meant to make the granite town an iron city.

More markers nearby

• Granite Industry in Llano County — steps away
• Buchanan Dam — 2.7 mi
• Hoover's Valley Cemetery — 4.3 mi
• Longhorn Caverns — 6.5 mi