“in a building made of salt!”
In the center of Grand Saline, Texas sits the only building in North America made of pure rock salt...known as the Salt Palace Museum.Grand Saline is home of one of the largest, purest salt domes in the nation with a supply estimated to last twenty thousand years! Grand Saline is also the Texas home of the Morton Salt Company. Many visitors cannot resist a taste... just to prove the building material is truly made of salt. The original Salt Palace was built in 1936 as part of the State of Texas Centennial Celebration. The solid salt structure was patterned after the Alamo town but was eventually torn down due to deterioration.Then, in 1975 a group of citizens decided to initiate the annual Salt Festival, held the second weekend of June, and as a centerpiece, the Salt Palace was rebuilt at its present location. Built of solid salt rocks donated by Morton Salt, a salt mortar mixture was used to replicate the original salt house. In 1993 the tiny salt building was melting away and was replaced by the present building. Changes were made in the design which included an overhanging roof to help protect the salt exterior from weather.A museum board was formed in 1995 to operate the Salt Palace and create a museum for the city. The museum not only features the salt industry, which dates back to 1845, but also the rich history of Grand Saline and its citizens.Displays inside the Salt Palace include salt mining memorabilia and photographs. A video tape filmed in the Morton Salt mine shows mining operations at 750 feet underground. Morton Salt does not longer allows tours in the mine.
Great little stop along our road trip. The staff was super friendly, and we learned more about salt than we thought we would. Got free salt crystals after. And of course we licked the building! Can't go to the salt palace without doing that :P
P.S. They open at 9am
New Salt Palace hours are 10:00am - 5:00pm Monday - Saturday. Also open some holidays. Call for info. Visit us on facebook/saltpalacemuseum.
Pretty cool place. worth the side trip. wish they let you buy mini salt containers or something though
Agree with jbthomas. Tomassa gave me a great education on Texas life along with other cool sites to check out. Highly worth visiting if you like local culture.
We stopped by on a Saturday afternoon and had a great time going through the museum. Tomassa did a great job showing us around. Very interesting!
It's a ways off the interstate, but we found it worth it. Quite interesting. While you can't tour down in the salt mines, this was both informative and surprisingly interesting. Seeing very large salt rocks, different kinds of salt, and how it's mined turned out to be worth the stop.
Fun, quirky place to go and learn about salt.
Really cute stopping point during our trip. Learned more about salt than I thought I would. There's a 15 minute video you can watch
Cute & Quaint Museum
A small one room museum made of salt. We enjoyed the video and all the memorabilia. Free salt crystals and they let you lick the building. My 2 boys enjoyed it. The staff was extremely kind and friendly and gave us all sorts of cool stuff.
Not stopping at the Salt Palace if one finds themselves in the Grand Saline area is like not visiting the Hershey factory while in Hershey, PA...a lost opportunity. I came away with history, a nugget and a shaker of salt.
Also, on the day I visited a penny flattening machine had just been delivered. Future fun coming soon!
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The Salt Palace
Hours
- Mon - Sat: 9:00 am - 4:00 pm
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