The sound you hear is a Texas thunderstorm in mid summer. Sometimes it comes up so quick, and the rain is so intense they call it a "toad strangling rain." When that happens around Saltillo it cleans and refreshes Stout's Creek and sometimes causes Big Creek to act up.
Saltillo
This web site was last updated on: February 7, 2021
All about a little prairie town in East Texas called
Latitude: 331104N . . . Longitude 0951934W
95 miles east of Dallas . . . 50 miles south of Paris . . . 84 miles west of Texarkana
Saltillo looking north of the railroad tracks toward where the Baptist Church and school are now located. circa 1900. Courtesy Dana Eatherly
An eastbound train leaves Saltillo following a winter snowstorm, February 1917. Built in 1887, the St. Louis & Southwestern Railway (SSW), a 1500 mile carrier that ran from St. Louis to Memphis plus Fort Worth, Dallas, and Corsicana, passed through Saltillo. Its nickname was the "Cotton Belt Route," and its freight slogan was "Blue Streak Fast Freight." The railroad was of the single track type which required signals/communications and sidings. It did much for the develop- ment and economy of the area.
That's not "SOW-tiller," but "SAL-tee-low
Looking south down Main street in Saltillo, Texas, about 1913. The first building on the left is the First State Bank of Saltillo, established in 1912. After a highway was built south of the railroad in 1928, most of the businesses moved onto it. This was highway U.S. 67, also called State Highway
No. 1, Bankhead Highway, and Broadway of America.
Saltillo school built about 1919.
A Saltillo sawmill circa 1909. The sawmill was located behind the railroad's water tank. A tram or cogwheel train transported logs from White Oak bottom to this site.
Saltillo sunday school picnic, circa 1918. Courtesy Wanda Corn
Courtesy James Fletcher
This school was built in 1930 at a cost of $25,000. The gymnasium was the white building to the right.
This school was replaced in 1975. Courtesy Richard Moody
Sulphur Springs, Texas, square in 1930's. The Hopkins County courthouse to the right was built in 1894. Sulphur Springs, the county seat of Hopkins County, is 17 miles west of Salitllo.
Saltillo once did a sizeable business exporting peaches to market. That was what the railroad dock was for that stood at the east end of town. (Postcard)
