The Chisholm Trail came right up Main Street, and the stage lines that served Central Texas included Salado among their stops.
Visiting the Museum Resturant
A bit of shopping
The Inn originally opened its doors in the early 1860s as The Shady Villa Hotel, a rustic Overland Stage and Pony Express stop along the Old Chisholm Trail.
Cattle drives and cavalry, heroes and desperadoes, had found a welcome resting place on the banks of Salado Creek (dubbed "salty" by early Spanish settlers); an ancient crossroads where centuries-old Comanche campgrounds and buffalo hunter's log cabins gave way to vast herds of longhorn cattle being driven north to Kansas City stockyards.
Such frontier luminaries as General George Armstrong Custer and Robert E. Lee, Texas patriots like Sam Houston, and outlaws such as the James Brothers and Sam Bass signed the register - not always with their own names!
