C.S.A. Saltpetre Mine

By 1863 the Union blockade had left the Confederacy short of munitions, and its Nitre and Mining Bureau licensed local operators to mine bat guano from Hill Country caves for the saltpeter in it. In Travis County, Thomas Anderson's mill became the Travis Powder Company that year. At New Braunfels, William Seekatz and his partners built a limestone kiln near the headwaters of the Comal River that turned out 100 pounds of saltpeter a day. It took 100 pounds of guano to make four pounds of saltpeter, so the crews there shoveled about 2,500 pounds a day.

What the plaque says

C.S.A. Saltpetre Mine Important to Texas in waging the Civil War. Site of natural deposits of bat guano, worked in the 1860s to obtain the chief ingredient for gunpowder. Cave inhabited by bats, source of the guano, extends about 23 miles. One room in the great bat den is 585' x 325', and has a 45' ceiling. A narrow gauge railway with mule drawn cars was used in the digging. Corrals for the mules occupied one chamber of the cave. Putrefied and dried bat guano, mixed with smaller parts of sulphur and charcoal, gave firepower to Civil War guns. 1965

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Garner State Park — 6.9 mi
  The Frio River park that Uvalde County built with the Civilian Conservation Corps and named for its own vice president, where people have danced on the stone pavilion every summer since the 1940s.
• Real County Historical Museum — 16 mi
  A small county museum in Leakey, at the head of the Frio Canyon, with a log-cabin parlor, an 1880s horse-drawn hearse, a wool and mohair shearing machine and 1910s jail cells.
• Briscoe-Garner Museum — 20 mi
  The Uvalde house of John Nance Garner, the vice president who made the office a power in Congress, now a free museum to him and to Governor Dolph Briscoe.
• Uvalde Grand Opera House — 20 mi
  An 1891 Victorian opera house on the Uvalde square with a turret and a dragon weathervane, once owned by John Nance Garner and still staging volunteer theater upstairs.

More markers nearby

• Silver Mine Pass — steps away
• Civilian Conservation Corps at Garner State Park — 5.9 mi
• Dry Frio Canyon — 7.6 mi
• Lombardy Irrigation Ditch — 9.3 mi