Salado Creek

Salado's springs came before its town. The Handbook says a tent meeting at Salado Springs on October 8, 1859, launched the plan for a college, and that Colonel Elijah Sterling Clack Robertson offered to donate land north and south of the springs to a corporation that would build the school and lay out a town called Salado. The town was founded directly because of Salado College, and the college company's charter followed in February 1860. The same entry records that Salado Creek became the first designated Texas natural landmark.

What the plaque says

Salado Creek Gushing limestone springs, abundant fish, flowers, and trees have long made the banks of Salado Creek a good home site. Indians camped beside stream; Spanish explorers named it; the first Anglo-American settler was Archibald Willingham, 1851. College and town of Salado were built on creek, 1860. Stream once had 8 mills, thus was county industrial center. Chisholm Cattle Trail crossed it, as did Dallas-San Antonio Stage Line. The 35-mile creek is one of many which rise at the Balcones Fault--an outstanding North American region of springs. Recorded Texas Natural Landmark - 1967

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 16 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.
• Williamson County Courthouse — 23 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Inner Space Cavern — 25 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.

More markers nearby

• Salado — steps away
• Main Street Bridges — steps away
• Davis Mill — steps away
• Kate Crawford and Zachary Clay Taylor — steps away