Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

The king's salt

When U.S. ships were blockading Southern ports during the Civil War, salt became as valuable as cotton, the white gold of the Confederacy. Salt was so scarce people would dig up smokehouse floors to strain the dirt for traces of this precious mineral, which was needed to cure meat - there could be no salt pork without salt. The need for salt gave South Texas a strategic importance because this area was rich in saline deposits.
   The oldest and largest deposits of salt were located south of here at two salt lakes named La Sal Viejo and, 15 miles to the west, El Sal del Rey (the salt of the king) in Willacy and Hidalgo counties. The salt beds were covered with shallow water which dried up during droughts. Other beds of tide salt were scattered along the shores of the Laguna Madre.
   In Spanish times, ox-cart trails stretched through the brush from La Sal Viejo and El Sal del Rey to the Laguna Madre. The carts with huge wooden wheels groaned with the weight of pure salt, white as the cat's milk. The carts were driven to the shallow lagoon, which they crossed on an oyster-shell reef. They traveled down Padre Island to the southern tip, where ships waited to carry the salt to Spanish and Mexican ports.
   Many decades later, when the Civil War began, the title to El Sal del Rey was in litigation. The new Confederate state of Texas took possession of this mineral wealth, with officials reasoning that El Sal del Rey had been "the property of the crown of Spain, the title to which became vested in the state of Texas."
   An agent for the state was put in charge of the El Sal del Rey salt works. The salt was mined and hauled over the old Spanish trail to the Laguna Madre, where it was loaded on flat-bottomed scows, with armed guards riding atop the cargo, and taken to Corpus Christi where the salt was loaded on blockade-running ships. Even though the Confederacy needed this scarce commodity at home, much of the salt was taken to Matamoros and sold for Mexican silver and gold. Profits were used to buy war supplies, like lead and gunpowder.
   The state's operation of the salt works ended after federal troops landed at Brazos Santiago and sent a raiding party to destroy the works at El Sal del Rey. This made the salt deposits on the Laguna Madre and Lamar peninsula even more important.
   Besides being shipped to Matamoros, salt was hauled to inland cities where it sold for up to $8 a bushel or was traded for food. It was better than the legal tender of the time.
   One man who worked as a salt laborer, Robert Adams, said gathering salt was quite an industry during the Civil War. "People upstate would give bacon and cornmeal for our salt. I used to carry salt on my back from the bottom of the Oso to the wagons. The salt was wet and the brine would run down my back. I guess I got pickled in those days."
   After U.S. troops captured Fort Semmes on Mustang Island, efforts to disrupt the salt trade intensified. Much of the commotion along the coast involved Union forces trying to put a stopper to the salt traffic. They were under orders to "dissolve the cargo if you cannot capture it."
   Mining salt didn't stop with the end of the war. After the war came the hide-and-tallow era and the beef packing houses used large amounts of salt to preserve the meat and cure hides. Salt was hauled from the Laguna on shallow-draft boats to a windmill on Water Street built by Capt. John Anderson. The salt was ground fine for table use and coarse for packing houses.
   The Laguna Madre's salt beds were wiped clean by the hurricane of 1874, the hurricane that all but destroyed Indianola. Not long after this, the mother lode of salt, one of the largest deposits in the world, was discovered in East Texas at Grand Saline. The once busy salt lakes are said to be used now for cattle licks. But long before black gold was found here, the mineral wealth of South Texas came from pure white glistening salt - the salt of the king.
   (Sources: "El Sal del Rey" by Wallace Hawkins; "Padre Island" by the Writers Roundtable; "History of Refugio" and "Texas Coastal Bend Trilogy" by Hobart Huson; "The Story of Corpus Christi" by Mary Sutherland; "History of Corpus Christi," an unpublished manuscript by Eugenia Reynolds Briscoe; and archival articles in the Caller-Times and in Frontier Times.)
  
  

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