Salado: The College Town That Stagecoaches Built
Near Killeen, Texas
The village you are passing through started as a crossing. Salado Creek, named by early settlers from a Caddo word meaning salty, marked the spot where the Old Military Road forded its waters. In eighteen fifty-two, the settlement gained a post office, and the following year a stagecoach line began weekly runs between Austin and Waco, stopping here to rest horses and passengers.
On October eighth, eighteen fifty-nine, a local landowner named Robertson donated ground for both a college and a townsite at that same crossing. Salado College opened the same day the town was platted. For a brief time it was one of the finest schools in antebellum Texas, drawing students from across the state. The Civil War nearly killed it. Enrollment collapsed, funds dried up, and the college first closed in eighteen eighty-five, then reopened for a while before shutting for good in nineteen thirteen. The town shrank with it. Today Salado is a village of roughly two thousand people, trading on its antique shops, artists, and the old Stagecoach Inn. The college is gone, but the creek crossing it was built around is still here.
