Grand Saline C.S.A.

The salt did not stop with the war. Samuel Q. Richardson, who came from Kentucky in 1859, got the works back in 1867 and raised output to about 250 sacks a day, according to local newspaper histories. The Texas and Pacific came through in 1872 and the town took the name Grand Saline. Morton Salt bought the leading plants in 1920, then a 140-acre tract a mile south of town in 1929, and began mining rock salt on January 28, 1931. By 1953 Van Zandt County was the largest salt producer in Texas.

What the plaque says

Grand Saline C.S.A. The large saline deposit was a major source of salt in Texas during the Civil War. Salt was first obtained by the Indians. In 1854, works were built. Sam Richardson, the owner in 1861, went to war and left his wife to run the works until the Confederate government took over production. Because salt was considered a strategic industry, salt workers were exempt from army service for a time and many wells were sunk to obtain the more than 10,000 pounds of salt made daily for the civilians and army west of the Mississippi River. Mule-powered pumps drew the brine from the wells. Gum logs, hollowed out and pinned together formed a pipeline to huge iron evaporating kettles. Salt was then sacked, purchased and hauled away on horseback, in wagons and oxcarts. During the Civil War, the demand for salt, the only known way to preserve meat, increased to supply the Southern army. Meat was salted, smoked and then packed in salt for the long, hot trips to army camps. Horses and mules used by cavalry, artillery, and quartermaster units required the vital mineral, too. Salt also preserved hides for making shoes, harnesses and saddles. When the Confederate government levied a meat tithe on farmers, the demand for salt increased and often cattle and cotton were exchanged for salt which itself became a medium of exchange. When salt became scarce, women dug up smokehouse floors to extract salt from the soil. Other Civil War salt works were operated along the coast and in other East, Central and West Texas counties. Erected by the State of Texas 1964

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Governor Hogg Shrine — 16 mi
  Quitman's 27-acre city park, once a state historical park, where two houses tied to James Stephen Hogg's marriage stand beside an arboretum, a nature walk and the grounds of the Old Settlers Reunion.
• Tyler State Park — 28 mi
  A 985-acre park eight miles north of Tyler, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1935 to 1941 around a 64-acre spring-fed lake, with more than 13 miles of trails.
• Purtis Creek State Park — 28 mi
  A 1,582-acre park straddling the Henderson and Van Zandt county line, built around a 355-acre lake with no-wake fishing, borrowed tackle, a 4.1-mile hike-and-bike trail and a nature path.
• Tyler Rose Garden and Rose Museum — 32 mi
  More than 38,000 rose bushes of about 600 cultivars in a free city garden, beside a museum of the Texas Rose Festival, which began in 1933, and of the rose industry.

More markers nearby

• Wiley Hardeman Post — 0.6 mi
• Poletown and Rhodesburg — 1.9 mi
• Benjamin Franklin Wheeler — 3.4 mi
• Mercer's Colony Eastern Boundary — 3.5 mi