The History of Grand Saline, Texas

Long before any town existed, the area's first users of its great resource were the Caddo and Cherokee peoples, who discovered the large salt prairie just south of present-day Grand Saline. They gathered salt evaporated from the brine stream flowing across the flats and traded it as a valuable commodity for other goods. Salt drew people to this spot for centuries.

The settlement that grew here was first called Jordan's Saline, a name reflecting the salty flats at its heart. For generations the area was known for its surface salt, even as the true scale of the deposit below remained hidden.

The modern town took shape with the railroad. When the Texas and Pacific Railway built through on its route from Marshall to Dallas in 1873, it established a depot here — and the new depot was named Grand Saline, a grander name for the old salt settlement. The railroad connected the town to wider markets and set the stage for industrial salt production.

Grand Saline grew as a railroad and farming town through the late 19th century, its identity tied to the salt flats and the rail line. But the discovery that would define its future still lay literally beneath the surface.

Although salt had been gathered here for ages, the giant underground salt dome wasn't fully appreciated until 1920, when Morton Salt came to dominate the local industry and began drilling. What they found was extraordinary: the top of one of the largest salt deposits in the country lies about 400 feet below the surface, and the dome is estimated to extend some 20,000 feet deep — a 250-million-year-old mass holding enough salt to last for thousands of years.

Morton Salt acquired the local salt companies in 1920 and sank the Kleer Salt Mine into the dome by 1931, producing up to 500 tons of salt a day and employing hundreds — about 950 workers by 1945. The mine made Grand Saline a true company-and-salt town, and it remains the heart of the local economy. The town also produced two famous natives: aviator Wiley Post, the first to fly solo around the world, and contemporary Christian music star Chris Tomlin. Today Grand Saline proudly calls itself the Salt Capital of Texas — a small town built on an ocean of ancient salt.