Question: What South Texas salt lake is known as “The King’s Salt”?
Answer: La Sal Del Rey, one of three naturally occurring salt lakes in Cameron and Hidalgo counties. Its salt was claimed for the king of Spain after Spanish explorers discovered it in the 1600s. The legal doctrine that a property’s ground resources belong to the state persisted for many years, but after the Civil War, the state’s new constitution asserted private ownership of subsurface minerals.
While the salt at La Sal Del Rey was the subject of the original provision, private mineral rights would later play a much more significant role in the development of the state’s oil and gas industry.
