SALAZAR, TRINIDAD (1862-1921). Trinidad Salazar, merchant, was born on April 16, 1862, in Ciudad Jiménez, Tamaulipas, Mexico. He was orphaned when young and sought a new life in Texas. He befriended Pablo Pérez,^qv the owner of the Amargosa Ranch, and by 1880 he was a wool and hide buyer for the ranch (see AMARGOSA, TEXAS). In 1886, with the money he saved from his salary, Salazar opened a general store in the Santa Cruz community, twenty-five miles southwest of the site of present Alice. On May 20, 1886, he married Adelaida Bazan, with whom he had two daughters; after her death in 1890, he married Guadalupe Garza, on June 23, 1894, and had several more children. In 1888, when the first San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway train arrived at its terminal point, a new townsite that became Alice, Salazar was aboard with merchandise purchased in San Antonio. He sold goods from a cart to other settlers of Alice before he set up a store. As one of Alice's original businesses, his store prospered. About 1887 he bought the Lichtenstein Hotel, on the corner of First and Aransas streets, and converted it into a general store; his family lived upstairs until he built a large home on Prospect Street. Salazar had the first two telephones in town, one at home and the other in his store. In 1904 he opened a large new store on South Reynolds Street, with merchandise valued at $75,000, everything from "thread to buggies and groceries to coffins." Salazar's was the largest general-merchandise store between Corpus Christi and Laredo during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Salazar was largely responsible for the construction of Nayer School and helped get the first bridge built across Latta Creek. He often made his home available to, or furnished lodgings for, poor victims of flash floods in the "Transporte" district. The T. Salazar Grammar School was named in his honor. He died on September 28, 1921, at his home in Alice.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Agnes G. Grimm, Llanos Mesteñas: Mustang Plains (Waco: Texian Press, 1968).

Agnes G. Grimm