El Sal del Rey, C.S.A.
Edinburg, Hidalgo County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Front side: Large salt lake located 26 miles northeast was principal source of salt in South Texas during the Civil War. Put under state guard and agent 1862. Salt sold to families, Texas Military Board, Army of Confederacy and wagons returning north on cotton road-vital trade route for South thru Mexico. Due to military and domestic importance, Union forces periodically wrecked the salt works from November 1863 until war's end. It was also a Texas Confederate base for the 1864 recapture of Brownsville. A memorial to Texas who served the Confederacy; erected by the State of Texas 1963. Back side: Salting or smoking were only was to preserve meat at time of Civil War. When South levied a meat tithe, salt necessary to cure bacon and beef for military. Salt was a must for horses and mules used by cavalry, artillery and supply wagons. Hides were preserved with it to make leather for shoes and harness. Other wartime salt works were operated along coast and in 7 counties in central, east and west Texas. El Sal del Rey, Spanish for "Salt for the King" also played a significant role in the history of Texas mineral law. A legal controversy raged for years over its ownership. Under Spain, mineral rights belonged to crown. Mexico retained the principle of the state ownership of minerals. Texas, as Republic and State, kept minerals in the public domain. Private possession of the lake began with the 1866 Texas Constitutional Convention which relinquished all minerals to landowners. The principle of private ownership was readopted in the Constitutions of 1869 and 1876.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This large natural salt lake northeast of Edinburg was South Texas's principal source of salt during the Civil War, placed under state guard in 1862 and sold to families, the Confederate army, and traders on the vital "cotton road" through Mexico. Salt was indispensable to the wartime South—for curing meat under the meat tithe, tending cavalry horses, and tanning leather for shoes and harness—so Union forces repeatedly wrecked the works from 1863 until war's end. The lake also figured in the long legal fight over Texas mineral ownership, settled toward private landowners in the constitutions of 1866 and after.
Why it matters
El Sal del Rey shows how a humble mineral became a strategic resource that shaped Confederate logistics and border trade, while its ownership disputes helped define Texas mineral law for generations.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
El Sal del Rey
Linn, TX
On the South Texas plains northeast of Linn lies a natural salt lake the Spanish claimed for the crown upon its discovery in 1746, invoking the old principle that salt itself was a form of money. For generations people across a wide region hauled away salt from its shores, and during 1863–64 its works helped supply Confederate Texas. Later legal battles over who owned the lake helped shape the state's foundational laws on private mineral ownership.
W. L. Lipscomb
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William Lawton Lipscomb came to Texas as a boy around 1880 and by 1894 had settled in the Rio Grande Valley's Hidalgo County, first managing a sugar plantation and later opening one of Edinburg's earliest general stores. In 1910 he moved his mercantile business into this newly finished building, running it while serving sixteen years as a county commissioner. His career captures the commercial coming-of-age of the lower Valley in the early twentieth century, as railroads and irrigation turned ranch country into towns.
Everitt Building
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Southern Pacific Depot
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