Salt War
San Elizario, El Paso County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Resentment, over private control of the salt lakes in the region often called Guadalupe Lakes; in 1877 led to the El Paso Salt War which entailed the loss of many lives and much property. 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
For generations, the salt lakes near San Elizario had been a shared resource that Hispanic communities of the El Paso valley gathered from freely. When private interests moved to control access in the 1870s, resentment boiled over into the El Paso Salt War of 1877, a violent clash that cost many lives and much property. The conflict remains one of the most turbulent episodes in the history of the far West Texas borderlands.
Why it matters
The Salt War captures the collision of communal Hispanic land traditions with Anglo private-property claims on the frontier, a struggle over resources and power that echoes across the American Southwest.
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Related events
- · El Paso Salt War of 1877
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Los Portales
San Elizario, TX
Around 1855 the farmer and rancher Gregorio Nacenseno García built this territorial-style adobe as his family home, its distinctive inset gallery — the portal — giving it the name Los Portales. By the 1870s it had become a schoolhouse, and its first teacher, Octaviano Larrazolo, went on to serve as governor of New Mexico and a United States senator. The building ties the Hispanic ranching world of the Rio Grande to a nationally significant political career.
San Elizario
San Elizario, TX
Founded in 1789 as the Spanish Presidio de San Elceario, this outpost was relocated northward to shield settlers from raids, guarding the El Paso district through the twilight of Spanish rule and the Mexican War for Independence. After the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo drew the border at the Rio Grande, the town became El Paso County's first seat and, in 1877, the flashpoint of the violent Salt War over access to communal salt beds.
The Camino Real
San Elizario, TX
For more than two centuries the Camino Real, the "Royal Road," carried goods and travelers between Mexico City, Chihuahua, and the New Mexican towns of Santa Fe and Taos. First traced by Juan de Oñate on his 1598 expedition, the route threaded through the San Elizario–Socorro–Ysleta settlements and crossed the Rio Grande near present-day El Paso. When the river became the U.S.–Mexico boundary in 1848, this ancient artery of Spanish colonial commerce became part of the United States.
Juan de Onate Expedition - 1598
San Elizario, TX
As Spain eyed both the mineral and missionary promise of New Mexico and worried over English rivals in the New World, King Philip II commissioned Don Juan de Oñate in 1595 to claim and colonize the region. In January 1598 Oñate led some 400 men and their families north across the Chihuahuan Desert to the El Paso area, where on April 30, 1598, he performed the ceremony called La Toma, taking formal possession of all the land drained by the Rio Grande for Spain. He then pressed north to found the province of New Mexico near present Santa Fe.