It Happened Here -- Salt City

State Rte. 90, Montezuma

It was while father Simon LeMoyne was visiting the Onondaga in 1654 that his Iroquois hosts showed him a spring they said was "defiled by a demon." LeMoyne recognized it for what it was, a salt-brine spring that he mentioned in his report to the governor of New France. Two years later he returned to establish a mission to the Onondagas, Ste. Marie de Ganentaa. During their time there the Jesuit missionaries made salt, boiling the brine in kettles and sending samples back to Quebec. By 1658 relations between the Iroquois and the French had soured and the missionaries fearing they would be massacred if they stayed, made a precipitous nighttime escape, never to return. The Iroquois had little taste for salt* and after the flight of the French the salt springs lay largely neglected until after the Revolution when the first settlers began filtering into the area. Two escaped Negro slaves were first reported producing salt in kettles and selling it to local settlers. In 1788 Asa Danforth and Comfort Tyler established the first permanent salt works there. By 1790 over 600 bushels of salt were produced in and around the community that became known as Salt Point. (Tyler lived an interesting life. He served in both the American Revolution and the War of 1812. He participated in Aaron Burr's aborted expedition to New Orleans, for which Burr was tried for treason, and Tyler was indicted but never tried. He survived a rabid dog bite by immediately packing the the wound in salt--which may have dessicated and drew out the infected saliva. In 1811 he moved to Montezuma, NY where he set up salt production operations for the Cayuga Manufacturing Company. There he died in 1827.)

Very early on the state government recognized the importance of the salt springs and took over the Salt Point area springs to prevent them from falling into the hands of a small monopoly of owners. In 1788, as part of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the Salt Springs Reservation was established and nine years later, the State assumed formal ownership of the springs. A Salt Springs Superintendent was appointed with a staff in charge of distributing brine to salt manufacturers, collecting fees and maintaining the equipment to erect wells and distribute brine through pumping stations, pipelines, and reservoirs.

A Reconstructed Salt Block on Onondaga Lake on

Early brine boiling operations which arranged a half dozen or fewer kettles in an arch, open to the weather were soon replaced by enclosed furnaces with their kettles arrayed in two rows on a second floor over a flue that led to a high chimney. 

Interior of the Salt Museum's Reconstruction

By the 1850's these "boiling blocks" or "salt blocks" would have contained fifty to sixty 120 gallon copper cauldrons which were supplied with brine from wooden pipes that carried the salt saturated water from state reservoirs to company cisterns to the individual kettles. (Wooden pipes were not subject to corrosion.) In the cisterns, impurities, including iron oxide and calcium chloride would settle out. Further settling out would occur in the boiling kettles which were supplied with a "bittern pan" which would be periodically removed and cleaned out.  Salt crystals formed at the top of the boiling brine and would be scooped out by workers and deposited in baskets made of ash splints, where the excess water was allowed to drain off. The baskets would be emptied into storage bins along the sides of the boiling block and the salt allowed to dry for 14 days before being packed in five bushel barrels.





 In an era before refrigeration, salt was crucial to food preservation. During the Civil War, Union Armies were usually well supplied with beef and pork, while southern armies, their salt works under the control of Union forces, often had to subsist on dried corn and peas and what they could forage. Salt was among the first commodities regulated by State government. The fourteen day drying period was mandated by law.  The Salt Superintendent or his staff inspected every barrel of salt produced.

State regulation, however, didn't extend to the well-being of the workers.  Most salt blocks ran day and night with two shifts of workers, working 12 hour shifts, splitting their days between feeding the fires in the furnace rooms and skimming salt crystals from the cauldrons. In summer the work was hellishly hot, but in the coldest winters, conditions might be even more unhealthful with workers alternating between the hot furnace rooms and the often drafty, freezing boiling lofts.  Then there were the dangers of working around floor level boiling cauldrons and in the constant steamy atmosphere of boiling brine. All too often horrific scalds and burns occurred and frequently pneumonia and other respiratory diseases incapacitated workers. It was not uncommon for workers wives and children to take the place of an injured worker to save his job while he recovered from a work related injury or illness.

A Mobile Drilling Rig at the Salt Museum

To get a good supply of high quality brine, early on, the State and private entrepreneurs began sinking brine wells.**

A Well site east of   
Fulton on Gilbert
Mills Rd, Oswego Co.

The Well Head --150 Years after the
well was drilled, grass refuses to grow on
the brine soaked ground
 

By 1848 the supply of firewood around Salt Point was running out. The rapid development of woodlands into farms throughout the region forced saltmakers to turn to coal, but after the Civil War coal became too expensive, as well.
From 1800 sea salt had been produced on Cape Cod by solar evaporation.  By 1822 the salt region around what became Syracuse had its first solar salt field. By 1888 solar evaporation operations dominated the salt industry around Syracuse. eventually covering the area with some 50,000 "salt rooms," evaporation troughs.
 




 A Model of Salt Producing Facilities, next to the Erie Canal.  White Evaporation Troughs or "Rooms" are flanked by grey Rain Covers.  Nearby are the older, Chimneyed Salt Block Buildings
   
Because salt was such a bulky commodity, transportation costs were a major expense in the production of salt. Prominent community leaders became vocal advocates of improved transportation. Comfort Tyler built some of the first sections of the Seneca Turnpike. A network of roads, followed by rails, began to radiate from Syracuse. Syracuse politicians were early supporters of the Erie Canal and the Seneca and Oswego Canals that would soon connect with the Erie Canal. James Geddes. an early advocate of the Canal, from Syracuse became the canal's four chief engineers. Salt became the major revenue generating commodity shipped on the canal. Cheaper transportation lowered the cost of salt, encouraging New York farmers to diversify from wheat production to pork and dairy production, which in turn, increased the demand for salt. In 1825 Salt Point after being known by several different names was incorporated as the village of Syracuse. In 1847 it merged with the nearby salt producing village of Salina to become the City of Syracuse.

At "Salt Road" and NY 90*** at Summerhill

*A decade before, during Father Jogues captivity the Mohawks teased him saying they had eaten the flesh of captives of other tribes, but had never tasted French flesh before and knowing that the French liked salted meat wondered, if when they boiled him, his flesh would taste salty.

**New Yorker, Edwin L. Drake adopted this technology when he first drilled for oil. See my post "It Happened Here--The Oil Driller" 6/9/13.

***Not to be confused with U.S. 90, the NY Thruway