El Paso Salt War

The salt behind the war lay in the Salt Basin, which covers most of northeastern Hudspeth County with dry lakes, gypsum dunes and salt flats, its center nearly bare of plants. Hunter-gatherers used the basin from about A.D. 800 to 1500. San Elizario and other Rio Grande towns got their salt at Tularosa in New Mexico until 1862, when a rumor that the supply would be closed sent them here, two days' journey away, over a cart road they cleared from Fort Quitman. H. A. Pitts was still mining salt in the 1930s.

What the plaque says

Resentment over private control of the salt lakes in this region, often called Guadalupe Lakes, led to the El Paso Salt War 1877 which entailed the loss of many lives and much property. Erected by the State of Texas 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Guadalupe Mountains National Park — 15 mi
  The four highest peaks in Texas, Guadalupe Peak at 8,751 feet among them, on a ranch that oilmen and ranchers sold or gave to make a park in 1972.
• The Pinery Butterfield Station — 15 mi
  The stone ruins of the highest station on the Butterfield Overland Mail, used for eleven months from 1858 until the line moved south to the forts in 1859.
• Frijole Ranch — 17 mi
  An old ranch house at a desert spring below the Guadalupe escarpment, home to the Smith family's orchard and now the park's history museum.
• McKittrick Canyon — 22 mi
  A spring-fed canyon of maples and oaks inside the Guadalupes, with the stone cabin an oil geologist built in 1931-32 and gave, with his land, toward the park.

More markers nearby

• Guadalupe Peak — 12 mi
• Ruins of "The Pinery" or "Pine Spring" Stage Stand — 15 mi
• Figure 2 Ranch — 23 mi