24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Salado, TX

Salado is a village in Bell County that was first incorporated in 1867 for the sole purpose of building a bridge across Salado Creek, and after decades as an unincorporated community its citizens voted to reincorporate in 2000.

The 2020 census counted 2,394 people in Salado, living in 990 households and 761 families.

Salado grew up around a college: in 1859 Colonel Elijah Sterling Clack Robertson created the Salado College Joint Stock Company and donated 320 acres, and sales of village lots funded Salado College, which operated from 1860 to 1885 and again from 1895 to 1913 before its building housed Thomas Arnold High School.

From 1866 to 1885 the famous Chisholm Trail cattle drives passed through Salado, with the Stagecoach Inn as one of their stops.

Salado's Stagecoach Inn, built around 1860-61, is the oldest continuously operating hotel in Texas; it was restored and reopened in 1943 by Dion and Ruth Van Bibber.

By 1884 Salado had grown to about 900 people with seven churches, 14 stores, two hotels and three cotton gins, but the railroads bypassed it to the north and south and the population slid to about 400 by 1914 and 200 by 1950.

Nineteen locations in Salado are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including the George Washington Baines House; Baines was the maternal great-grandfather of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Archaeologists have unearthed the Buttermilk Creek Complex near Salado, a Paleolithic Native American site dating back about 15,500 years, among the oldest evidence of human habitation in North America.

Salado Creek was designated the first Texas natural landmark in 1966.

Salado sits on the Balcones Fault, the line where springs emerge and species ranges divide - the California fan palm, for example, grows naturally only west of Salado and the fault line.