The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1884-12-17
Syracuse and Salt.

Mr.. Editor:--If you should start, by rail,
west from Albany, in four or five hours you
would find yourself just half across the state
OF New York; and, as the train began to
slow up, you would hear the train-men
shout the classical name, Syracuse" You
al1ght and find thoroughly wide-awake
business city Of about sixty thousand peo-
pie. Men not fifty years old will tell you
that they remember when the site of the
city was nearly all swamp, and good
share OF it under water, and all of the build
ings were few log huts. Not a very en-
couraging place to build a city, you say; and
you ask, What gave the town q start? They
Will tell you, The production of salt and the
construction of the Erie canal Now every
body uses salt, but great many every
bbodys " don't know how it is produced.
Syracuse was once called Salt Point: and,
although she has been going through
freshening process ever since still her prin-
cipal street and one Of her adjoining towns
are each called Salind. The district known
as the Salt Reservation is on quite low
ground, in the northwestern part of the city,
at the head of Onondaga Lake-a body of
water five or six miles in length. The larger
portion OF this Salt Reservation is owned
controlled and worked by the state. The
first process in the production Of salt is to
sink well to the depth of from three to six
hundred feet. A number of these wells
have been sunk within few rods of one an
other, and large engine communicates the
power by belts and wire cables to the pumps
at each well. The water is pumped from
these wells and forced into large covered
reservoir, called the pump-house - from
which, being higher than any other part of the
works, the water readily runs down hill in
pump-logs of seven or eight-inch base, to the
bailing-houses and numerous watts This
water, as it is pumped from the ground, is
salt enough to make a very good brine in
which farmer might put down his pork
and beef Now, every boy knows there are
two kinds of salt-fne and coarse, or what
the salt men call solar, or sun, salt. Each
kind is prepared in an entirely different
way. In one instance the water is run from
these pump-logs into watts. These watts are
about fifteen inches deep, sixteen feet wide
and several hundred feet long In the first
watts the water is allowed to stand till all of
the impurities settle, and then it is run into
other watts, where the water evaporates in the
sun till it gives you the solar, or coarse,
salt. These watts are all covered with NOV
able roofs, about eighteen feet long, and when
IL rains, or the water will not evaporate,
they are kept over the vats. The fine salt is
made in the boiling-houses There is long
arch, with about fifty caldron kettles in a
row on each side of the arch, with one of
these pump-logs running along the top and
middle of the arch between the two rows of
Kettles, with stop-cock over each kettle.
Then the water is boiled and when a suffi-
cient quantity of salt settles in the bottom
OF the kettles, it is Scooped out drained
and barreled. If it is intended for table or
dairy use, it is taken to a mill and purified
and ground Should this salty communica-
ton sufficiently keep the good-nature of nv
many friends who are readers of the good
old WATCHMAN, l will try at no distant day
to act as your guide on a Tour of the Canals
and Canal Life. CHARLES b. GOODRICH.
Syracuse, n. Y, December IL, 1884,