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, named for settler John Jordan, who set up a salt works on the flats. For decades the area was known for its surface salt and brine, before wells reached the deposit below in the late 1800s.

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. Beneath the surface, salt wells and, from 1890, a mine were already tapping the deposit that would define its future.

Although salt had been gathered here for ages, large-scale mining of the giant underground salt dome came after Morton Salt came to dominate the local industry around 1920. What lay below was a huge salt dome, and it would carry the town's economy for the next century.

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 Morton has long been its largest employer. 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.