Salt Flat is a

ghost town Ghost Town(s) or Ghosttown may refer to: * Ghost town, a town that has been abandoned Film and television * ''Ghost Town'' (1936 film), an American Western film by Harry L. Fraser * ''Ghost Town'' (1956 film), an American Western film by All ...

in northeastern Hudspeth County,

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

, United States. It lies along the concurrent U.S. Routes 62 and 180 north of the

Census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counterparts of incorporated places, su ...

(CDP) of Sierra Blanca, the

county seat A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. The term is in use in Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, Taiwan, and the United States. The equivalent term shire town is used in the US ...

of Hudspeth County. Its elevation is 3,730 feet (1,137 m). Although Salt Flat is unincorporated, it has a ZIP Code of 79847. The headquarters of the nearby

Guadalupe Mountains National Park Guadalupe Mountains National Park is an American national park in the Guadalupe Mountains, east of El Paso, Texas. The mountain range includes Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas at , and El Capitan used as a landmark by travelers on the ...

uses this ZIP Code although it is located closer to Pine Springs, which has no post office.

Salt deposits

Just outside the community there is a dry salt pan called Salt Flat Playa or Salt Basin. It straddles the New Mexico-Texas border and is about 150 miles long, and 5 to 15 miles wide making it one of the largest gypsum playas in the United States. The playa occupies the north-south oriented Salt Basin Grabben, which lies between the Guadalupe and Delaware Mountains on the east and the Sierra Diablo and Diablo Plateau on the west. Originally the playa was a lake during the late

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the '' Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed ...

, but drying of the climate since then has left a salt pan.Hussain, M., Rohr, D. M., and Warren, J. X., 1988, Depositional environments and facies in a Quaternary continental sabkha, West Texas, in Guadalupe Mountains revisited, Texas and New Mexico: West Texas Geological Society Publication 88-84, p. 177-185. Today, a briny water table is about three feet below the surface. Capillary evaporation in the dry, hot weather pulls brine upwards and

evaporite An evaporite () is a water- soluble sedimentary mineral deposit that results from concentration and crystallization by evaporation from an aqueous solution. There are two types of evaporite deposits: marine, which can also be described as oce ...

(gypsum, halite) and

carbonate A carbonate is a salt of carbonic acid (H2CO3), characterized by the presence of the carbonate ion, a polyatomic ion with the formula . The word ''carbonate'' may also refer to a carbonate ester, an organic compound containing the carbonat ...

(calcite, dolomite) minerals precipitate.Hussain, M., Rohr, D. M., and Warren, J. X., 1988, Depositional environments and facies in a Quaternary continental sabkha, West Texas, in Guadalupe Mountains revisited, Texas and New Mexico: West Texas Geological Society Publication 88-84, p. 177-185. Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) grow on the surface and immediately below the surface when the playa is wet. Alternating light and dark bands are either gypsum-rich (light) or dolomite-rich (dark) When the playa is dry during the summer, winds blow the gypsum into sand dunes. The San Elizario Salt War was a dispute over ownership and access to these

salt Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quanti ...

deposits.''The Salt War of San Elizaro,'' The Handbook of Texas Online
/ref>

References

External links

Kohout, Martin Donell. ''Salt Flat, TX,'' ''Handbook of Texas Online''
(accessed December 22, 2012)

(accessed December 22, 2012) Unincorporated communities in Hudspeth County, Texas Unincorporated communities in Texas Ghost towns in West Texas {{HudspethCountyTX-geo-stub