Great Salt Lake

La Sal Vieja is two lakes, not one: a west basin of about 2,475 acres and an east basin of 720, split by a natural isthmus roughly six miles northwest of Raymondville. Native people, thought to include Coahuiltecan groups, were among the first to use the salt, and in Spanish Texas it was a trade good between Native communities and colonists. Salt was still dug and shipped commercially as late as 1920. A water district formed in 1928 first delivered canal water in 1939 and 1940, and the lakes have held water since.

What the plaque says

Great Salt Lake Here has existed since the first Spanish chronicler traversed the region, A great salt lake which supplied all northern Mexico with salt. (1936)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of South Texas History — 20 mi
  Edinburg's regional museum, begun in 1967 in the 1910 Hidalgo County jail and now telling the Rio Grande's story from fossils and native peoples through steamboats to the 20th century.
• La Lomita Chapel — 34 mi
  A small sandstone chapel on the Rio Grande levee, built by Oblate missionaries in 1865 and rebuilt at this site in 1899, the landmark that gave the city of Mission its name.

More markers nearby

• Lasara — 1.2 mi
• Hilltop Gardens — 7.9 mi
• Willacy County — 8.0 mi
• Edward Burleson Raymond — 8.2 mi