The Civil War-Lamar Salt Works and Union Raid

Salt was as important to the Confederacy as ammunition. You couldn't preserve food without it. You couldn't cure gunpowder without it. And when the Union blockade cut off the Gulf ports, the salt works on the Lamar Peninsula became a strategic target. This episode follows the Confederate salt operation on Aransas Bay — who built it, what it took to run it, and the Union naval raid that came up from the Gulf and burned it to the ground. The same peninsula where whooping cranes feed every winter was, for a few years, a wartime industrial site.

Published July 20, 2026