Palestine Salt Works C. S. A. - Texas Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

Marker erected by the State of Texas.

Texas Historical Commission Atlas data:
Index Entry: Palestine Salt Works C. S. A.
City: Palestine
County: Anderson
Subject Codes: geology; Civil War
Year Marker Erected: 1963
Marker Location: corner of E. Market and US 287, Palestine (Courthouse grounds)
Marker Size: 1936 Centennial - Subject Marker (gray granite) [correction sent]

Marker Number: 8792 Marker Text: (obverse) Located 6.5 miles southwest during the Civil War this salt works was assigned to produce salt for the Confederacy at a fixed price of eight dollars for a hundred-pound sack. Private customers from East Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana often paid twenty dollars for a sack. Producing salt was slow, tedious work. Salt water was taken from wells spread over a distance of three-fourths of a mile. A pump operated by a slave was placed in each well. Gum logs hollowed out and joined together, formed a pipeline from the wells to large cast iron boiling kettles which were kept fired. Heated water was then transferred to smaller kettles for quick evaporation. (reverse) Salt was then sacked, purchased and hauled away on horseback, in wagons and in oxcarts. During the Civil War the demand for salt, the only known way to preserve meat, increased to supply the southern army. Meat was salted, smoked for preservation. It was then packed in salt for the long, hot trips to army camps. Horses and mules used by the cavalry, artillery, and quartermaster units required the vital mineral too. Salt also preserved hides for making shoes, harness and saddles. When the confederate government levied a meat tithe on farmers, the demand for salt increased. Often cattle and cotton were exchanged for salt which itself became a medium of exchange when salt became scarce, women dug up smokehouse floors to extract salt from the soil. Other Civil War salt works were operated along the coast and in other East, Central and West Texas counties. Erected by the State of Texas 1965

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