Salt Industry
In July 1847, four days after the Latter-day Saints reached what they called the Great Salt Lake Valley, President Brigham Young and pioneers were floating in the briny lake, reported historian John L. Clark.
“We took our dinner at the freshwater pool and then rode six miles to a large rock on the shore of the Salt Lake, which we named Blackrock, where we all halted and bathed in the salt water,” future church president Wilford Woodruff wrote. “No person could sink in it but would roll and float on the surface like a dry log. We concluded that the Salt Lake was one of the wonders of the world.”[1]
- While they enjoyed its buoyant qualities, they were also impressed with its practical importance. From the rocks lining the shore, they collected samples of salt “as pure, white and fine as the best that can be bought on the market.”
- They also noticed how easy it was to scoop up from the salt flats that surround the lake. In August 1847, a committee was assigned to get salt for the new settlement; they returned four days later with 125 bushels of coarse salt that they had shoveled out of deposits, along with some fine white table salt obtained by boiling. Historian John Clark said that the Mormons considered the salt deposits to be a communal resource, much like water or timber. The initial interest in harvesting salt from the Great Salt Lake was to satisfy the local demands for table salt and for stock use.[2]
A crude, temporary saltworks, including apparatus for boiling down lake water, had been built by 1848. In 1849, the Quorum of the Twelve of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints directed a company of men to establish a permanent saltworks. By 1850, Charley White and his family were operating the saltworks on the lake shore opposite Black Rock and producing fine, coarse, and common grades of salt. The White family saltworks eventually halted for reasons unknown.
The laborious boiling method of obtaining salt declined in use in the 1870s. Solar evaporation ponds were used, and eventually pumps were installed to fill the ponds. “The resulting product tended to be bitter and damp, until by trial and error the saltmakers established the fractional crystallization process, which used a series of ponds to create a nearly 100 percent pure product.”[3]
- The peculiar characteristics of the Salt Lake salt made it very difficult to refine, and after extensive experiments, the Inland Crystal Salt Company discovered that it was possible to make a granulated salt that is superior to any imported dairy salt.[4]
- The harvest season was generally from September to April. During the other months, water from the lake was pumped into the evaporation ponds in a successive manner — as the brine becomes stronger and stronger from one pond to the next after all impurities are allowed to settle out. The final pond, when the harvest season begins, is allowed to drain, leaving behind four to six inches of wet salt crust that is then shoveled by hand and gathered using wheelbarrows, and moved into huge piles that continue to drain and dry out.[5]
The Church of Jesus Christ finally became involved in the salt industry during the late 1880s. The Church held a large interest in Inland Crystal Salt, but sold its interest to Morton Salt in 1923, thus making Morton Salt the dominant salt producer in Utah.[6]
The Saltair plant of Inland Salt Co. was opened in 1892, at a station on the new Salt Lake & Los Angeles Railway, which was completed to the Saltair salt plant, and the Saltair resort to the north, both on the south shore of Great Salt Lake (the resort opened in 1893). Inland Crystal Salt built a seven-mile system of rail spurs on its property, serving the various sites among the 2,000 acres of evaporation ponds where dried salt was loaded, at the rate of a trainload every day, all bound for mines and mills in the surrounding states.[7] The product from the Great Salt Lake in 1888 was as follows:
- Deseret Salt Company, 10,000 tons
- Inland Salt Company, 5,000 tons
- Syracuse Salt Company, 3,000 tons
- Hot Springs Salt Company, 1,000 tons
- All others, 2,000 tons
- Total, 21,000 tons[8]
Salt was valued for consumption as table salt, but it was also in demand for mining operations for the reduction of ore. The silver mills, however, began deteriorating during the summer of 1893.
Salt and railroads in Utah are closely tied together. The earliest reference comes from the mid-1880s. The town of Syracuse, west of today's Clearfield, was so-named because of the salt that was being harvested and shipped by wagon to the Utah Central line. The name was taken from Syracuse, New York, a large center for salt shipments at the time. The salt from Syracuse, Utah, was then transloaded from wagons to the cars of Utah Central and shipped north to the Montana mines, mills, and smelters.[9]
In addition to the salt from the Great Salt Lake, large deposits of red rock salt are found near Nephi and Salina. Red rock salt is used for feeding cattle.
The Great Salt Lake is the remnant of a much larger ancient inland sea that scientists have dubbed Lake Bonneville. As the lake shrank over time, the concentration of minerals in its waters, including salt, increased, while the resulting dried-up areas became coated with salt to a depth of several feet.
