Salt in the history of the Americas

The first Europeans coming to North America came to fish the bounty of the Grand Banks and realized commercial success by being able to salt their catch so it could reach home markets unspoiled. When Europeans first landed on Caribbean St. Maarten, they discovered its inhabitants harvesting sea salt. The Onondaga Indians around Syracuse, NY, were boiling saline water from underground salt deposits as early as 1654. Early Massachusetts colonists set us salt-making on Cape Cod and as pioneers spread westward over the continent, considerations of salt access often directed their migrations. When Lewis & Clark reached the Oregon coast, exploring Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, one of their first acts was to establish a saltworks to replenish their supply. In both the American Revolution and its Civil War, salt was a strategic objective and the Confederates’ loss of Saltville, VA helped shorten the conflict. The new nation’s earliest public works engineering success, construction of the Erie Canal, was prompted by the need to access the salt of the area; Syracuse, NY is still denoted “The Salt City.” Later, salt production keyed a vibrant economy in West Virginia as it has also done in Ohio, Michigan, Louisiana, Kansas, Utah and California.

The two advanced civilizations toppled by the Spanish conquistadors who conquered the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in Peru discovered salt mines.