The Salt Palace

In my last post I began my description of Day Two, and my goals of the day: getting from MS to the Dallas/Fort Worth area, and partaking in a local museum. I did end up doing both, just not in the way I had thought I would. The time I had taken in enjoying my arrival in Texas meant that if I got back in the car and did not stop, I would be arriving in the vicinity of D/FW just in time for 5:00 traffic. While there is potentially someone out there who would enjoy that experience, that someone is not me. So I decided a small detour was in order, and after a couple of quick searches with my GPS, my phone, and my atlas I found a promising location: the Salt Palace Museum & Visitor Center of Grand Saltine.

I was welcomed into the cozy Salt Palace by the volunteer in charge, who cheerfully supplemented the collection of local history mementoes (primarily geological samples of salt and artifacts relating to the company owning the local salt plant & processing center) with some pretty amazing facts. Apparently the small Texas town supplies 1/3 of the world's salt, including all of the salt to be found on pretzels. The local facilities include not only evaporative salt (including the table salt I had in my apartment) but also mined salt (which is one of the purer sources of mined salt, hence the pretzel salt monopoly). A brief video included samples of footage showing the different portions of processing involved with the salt, from origins to packaged goods being shipped out to consumer markets. And every visitor to the site receives a free chunk of salt from the area. The building itself is also primarily comprised of salt (if you look at online reviews it's evidently a favorite pastime of tourists to lick the building), and there's also a boulder-sized piece of salt out front for photo opportunities like this:

Now I'm more curious about salt and its history.