Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1888-05-05
SALT PRODUCTION.
A GREAT INDUSTRY AND SOME.
THING OF ITS PROCESSES.
The Great Salt Works in Michigan
Interesting Account of Well
Boring and Salt-Making.


We have but little knowledge of the
methods Of the American aborigines for
obtaining salt. 1t seems most probable
that they shared the "iicks," or salt
springs of the forest with the wild ami
mails. From the middle of the seventeenth
century, however, it is known that the In
dians made salt at Syracuse, and in 1888
they sold the springs to New York for
$500. Virginia had salt-works in 1880,
and in 1859 the whites were making salt
In South Caro- ina. American salt is made
now in New York, West Virginia, Ohio,
California, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia,
Louisiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Massachu- |
sets and Michigan but in comparison |
with the product of New York and Michi- |
gan the quantity produced severally by
the other States is small. When the In |
dians sold out at Syracuse in 1888 they |
were producing 500 bushels annually. |
209, 529, 603 bushels of salt. The total |
output to present date is estimated in
round numbers at 236 100000 bushels In
twenty years Michigan has produced about
100000 bushels of salt.
The first well was sunk for salt at Sagi-
nav in 1859. At depth of $50 feet brine
salinometer, and on the 4th of July, 1860,
the works" were thrown open 10 the in
spection Of the inhabitants. The first wear
saw 10000 bushels made Inside of six
years there were sixty firms engaged in
making salt on the Saginaw and 100 salt
blocks" The product had increased from
10000 bushels in 1860 to 2039, 9S5 bushels
in 1866, and in ten years from the COM
mencement of the work it amounted to
3,144, S95 bushels.
Between 1860 and 1866 not less than
100000 were invested in the great salt
scheme on the Saginaw, and men were
bankrupted. The original company,
backed by Jesse Hoyt, invested $500, 900,
and in 1884 it had shrunk 200 per cent
Another company planted 100000 and
subsequently was sold out for $65, 1000
One of the men who, in the employ of Mr..
Hoyt, worked on the original well and
works has assured me that he has seen salt
sold on the premises for 50 per barrel, and
yet he knew that it had cost more than
that to make it. 1t is safe to say that
prior to 1870 not dollar was made in
manufacturing salt in Michigan because of
the inexperience of the men engaged in
the work and of the greed to get all the
salt there was in the brine The brine as
1T comes from the earth on the Saginaw
contains iron, which made the salt rusty,
bromide of sodium that made it bitter
and gypsum that made it cake, and all of
which made it practically useless, save as
fertilizer
In 1869 law was enacted by the Legis-
lature making 1t compulsory that all salt
manufactured in the State should be in
spected. Such an enactment was procured
In this way the quality of the salt i'm
proved so rapidly that it became apparent
that it might now compete with other salt
in the markets. The result was the Mich
igan salt rapidly rose in the estimation of
packers, and from a consumption of 36,571
barrels in 1873 to 100000 barrels in 1886
The product of the State has increased
from sos, 620 barrels in 1870, the first year
the salt was inspected under legislative
enactment, to, in round numbers, 100000
barrels in 1887, and from one mandatory
in 1860 to 1876 firms operating 1l6 steam
,and twenty-four pan blocks" making a
total of 140 blocks, besides $500 solar salt
"covers," the whole having capacity of
over 100000 barrels season. The State
is divided into nine salt districts: Sagi-
nav, Bay, Huron, St. Clair, Iosco, Mid
land, Manistee, Mason and Gratiot coun-
ties, the first, Saginaw, producing about
million and a quarter barrels, and the last
about $50 barrels annually.
The best place to see the work is on the
Saginaw river, where within distance of
about twenty miles there are eighty-three
firms making lumber, shingles and salt.
The stranger steaming up the river in
summer sees clustered about every mill
from three to a dozen or more pyramidal
towers rising from what appears to be a
hut or cabin to a hight of from fifty to
seventy feet. These are simply the old
derrick, so familiar to visitors among the
Pennsylvania oil fields quarter of CEN
fury ago. The little house is the engine
room, in one end of which is the well and
the tower is built over it to get room to In
sert or remove the tools used in drilling
the wells or the long "rods" used in pump
ing the brine. The whole is covered in
and generally painted an iron red. On
the Saginaw these wells are from 700 to
1000 feet deep. In one well at Bay City
the drills were worked down $500 feet, in
hope of finding rock salt, but the enter
prise was abandoned. At Marine City, on
the St. Clair river, rock salt was found at
100 feet and at Manistee, on Lake Michi-
gan, it was found at 2,lU0 feet On the
edSltIH Subft Oi 1dhG as L nave
said, the same rock salt is found at from
900 to 500 feet.
In making salt well it is necessary to
keep out the surface water To obtain this
result a five or six-inch hole is made down
to solid rock, on which shoulder" is
made, upon which rests the iron tubing or
'casing." Below that the hole Is narrowed
TO three or four inches, and carries that
10 krsnn
salt is the material at the bottom, fresh
water is forced down from the surface 1t
dissolyes the salt, loads itself with all it
can take up, about "a per cent, and by the
same downward pressure of surface water
flows into the "cisterns' through an inside
pipe, as clear as distilled water. This is
the method ON the St. Clair
On the Saginaw rock salt has never been
found. Biologists say the valley is under
laid with howl-like depression of the old
DeYonian ocean-bed, and probably the
rock salt IS there too, if only the drills are
sent deep enough to find it. The Saginaw
valley brine is found in what is known TO
geology as the " Waverly Group" being
coarse, porou- rock that seems 10 hold the
brine as & sponge does water. Where does
the brine come from? The roci-s of this
group crop out on the western shore of
Huron, and doubtless under the la Ike,
where the vast body of fresh water passes
down by percolation through the porous
rock, comes II contact with the lower bed
of rock salt, dissolves it, and is forced on
and up until this salt rock" is filled with
brine, aud through breaks here and there
is forced so near the surface that in fresh
cts surface water comes in contact with it,
and as the surface water falls the brine fol-
lows it up, on the principle of the syphon,
and becomes a salt spring.
A good well will yield from 400 to 600
barrels of brine per day. But constant
pumping viii clog up the pores OF the salt
rock; produce constipation OF the well, so
to speak, and the yield falls to such an ex-
tent that it becomes necessary to remove
the pump and administer a cathartic in
the form of a nitro-glycerine torpedo.
There are doctors who make business of
this. Carefully the dangerous medicine is
lowered through the dark gullet to the
bottom OF the we'll. Then a messenger"