Danger lurks in West Texas salt flats for modern tourists, early tycoons alike
SALT FLAT — “Don’t even think of trying to drive out on those salt flats,” Shirley Richardson told me one afternoon this week as we stood outside the Salt Flat Cafe and bus stop. Shirley’s grandparents opened the cafe in 1929 in what’s now a desolate ghost town near the base of the spectacular Guadalupe Mountains. She had to close it eight months ago, she told me, after she fell and broke her knee, wrist, ribs and shoulder while chasing after a dog that had run out on the highway with a butane truck bearing down.
The salt flats cover a portion of her family’s ranch, 5 miles east of the cafe in Hudspeth County in West Texas. They’re a remnant of an ancient, shallow lake from the Pleistocene Epoch, approximately 1.8 million years ago. From U.S. Highway 62, the surface looks densely packed, like the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. It’s not.
We talked a bit about the cafe and about how the little town has hosted a couple of flight pioneers. Amelia Earhart touched down in Salt Flat three times in the 1930s, Shirley said. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos had the cafe’s green-chili enchiladas
not long ago. The vast acreage across the road from the cafe is part of his Blue Origin spaceflight services company.
Driving past the flats again, I noticed a westbound car slow down and pull off the pavement. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the driver do exactly what Shirley had warned about. The car plowed through the glistening, gray flats for about 50 yards before bogging down, tires spinning as the driver got out and tried to push. I made a Uturn and stopped on the shoulder. A young man in shorts and T-shirt, arms waving, came running through the salty muck toward my car.
Unclaimed property
The salt flats have caused consternation before. They even sparked a short-lived war.
To get a sense of their significance, imagine a train of 16 cottonwood carts pulled by 60 yoke of oxen making its creaking, tedious way across the arid waste of far West Texas. The 80 or so men driving the stolid animals are salineros, salt gatherers from the El Paso Valley communities of Ysleta, Socorro and San Elizario. Salineros have been making the 160-mile trip since the 1700s.
Nearly all the residents downriver from El Paso, most of them farmers and livestock grazers, were Mexican in language, ethnicity and culture (and still are). Salt was integral to their daily lives. Not only did they rely on it to preserve meat and cure hides, but also they sold it to silver miners around Chihuahua, who used tons in the refining process. And they sold to the U.S. Army.
Under Spanish law, the salt beds were common property. After the Mexican War, they became unclaimed lands under American law, available to anyone who filed on them. The Mexicans — who became MexicanAmericans when the Rio Grande changed channels in the 1820s — believed that everybody had a right to the salt, a right guaranteed by the Spanish crown centuries earlier and affirmed by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Enduring the heat and the threat of Apache attack as they had for generations, they never thought to file claims.
They didn’t realize that after the Civil War and the chaos of Reconstruction, their world was changing drastically. The late Paul Cool, author of the definitive history of the Salt War (“Salt Warriors: Insurgency on the Rio Grande”), put it this way: “If salt was the excuse for war, the underlying reason was this struggle between the rights of the community and those of hustling individualists.”
The hustlers included El Paso businessmen W.W. Mills, Albert J. Fountain and Louis Cardis, who attempted to acquire title to the salt deposits and charge for the resource. Fountain was elected to the Texas Senate expecting to secure title for the people of the El Paso area. When Mills and Fountain began feuding, Cardis and Mills joined forces with Charles H. Howard, a Missouri lawyer and former Confederate officer. Cardis helped get Howard elected district attorney, but then Howard turned on Cardis.
In September 1877, Howard arrested two San Elizario residents heading for the salt beds. An angry mob captured and held the district attorney for three days at San Elizario. (See last week’s column.) He gained his freedom by vowing to give up claim to the salt beds and leave the state. He retreated to nearby Mesilla, N.M., but soon returned and killed Cardis in an El Paso store. Arraigned for the murder, he was placed under bond to appear in court in March.
Four-day gunbattle
The mule-headed Missourian couldn’t leave well enough alone. In December, a wagon train of Mexicans from both sides of the border left the valley, headed for the salt deposits; Howard filed suit. When he went down to San Elizario to press charges, he and a handful of Texas Rangers were besieged by a mob of several hundred locals. Howard and the Rangers took cover in the Rangers’ fort, and a gun battle raged for four days. On the fifth day Howard gave himself up.
The Rangers also surrendered, believing they had an agreement with the insurgents to free Howard.
That’s not what happened. On Dec. 17, he lined up against a wall before a firing squad of eight men from Mexico. Cool quotes an eyewitness account: “When all was ready, Howard spoke. He could not speak Spanish very fluently, but enough to make himself understood; he said, ‘You are now about to execute 300 men,’ then, baring his breast, he gave the word, ‘Fire!’ ”
They did. The insurgents executed two of Howard’s associates, as well, but allowed the Rangers to leave the fort after forfeiting their arms. Within a few days, several detachments of troops and a posse of American citizens arrived in San Elizario, where they killed or wounded an untold number of residents. Most of the insurgents already had fled into Mexico, and no one was ever arrested or brought to trial. President Rutherford B. Hayes and Army Gen. Phillip Sheridan resisted public pressure to invade Mexico.
Saved from folly
There were no salineros from San Elizario in Salt Flat this week, but there was one very distressed young man from Japan. “Toku” (he asked that I not use his full name), his wife and 8-year-old son, Japanese citizens living in New Jersey, were on the last day of their American Southwest vacation when they got stuck on the flats. I drove Toku back to Shirley’s place, where she greeted him with, “You stupid idiot!”
Despite his limited English, Toku understood what she had said. “Yes, idiot, yes,” he said. Shirley told him it would cost $5,000 to get a tow truck from El Paso, 87 miles away. Toku’s mouth fell open.
Despite her exasperation, rescuing people from their temporary folly on the flats is for Shirley a common occurrence. She led us into the cafe, where she started making calls to tow-truck operators in Van Horn. No one could help. She mentioned to Toku that the Greyhound to El Paso would be coming through in about half an hour. Passengers have to stand beside the road and wave it down.
As Toku considered the bus option, his cellphone beeped. It was his wife back at the car. A man driving a pickup had stopped and was able to pull the car out.
The young man from Japan, the now-dried muck on his shins and shoes a souvenir of his West Texas adventure, was near tears. “Such wonderful people,” he said, smiling at Shirley and me. “Such wonderful people.”