Salt in Upstate New York

Salt has been a part of human life since the beginnings the oldest recorded mention of salt is almost 5,000 years ago in a Chinese document on pharmacology. There have even been times in human history that salt has been used as a form of currency. Salt taxes have been a standard tool for governments to raise money. Napoleon used the revenue from salt to pay for his foreign wars and it is even said that Columbus voyages were paid for by salt taxes. In the United States the state of New York used a salt tax to pay for the construction of the Erie Canal. 

One of the most commonly mined minerals is salt or NaCl. We use it in everything from cooking to keeping ice off the roads in the winter. Man has used salt for thousands of years and will continue to do so for thousands more. Salt deposits are a result of evaporation of a mineral-rich body of water; as the water evaporates the minerals are left behind. Those mineral that are left are halite and gypsum. These minerals are consistently deposited in a bulls-eye pattern in a basin. The center of the bulls eye will have halite (NaCl or rock salt).  The next ring will contain anhydrite (CaSO₄) and the outer ring will be gypsum (CaSO₄ ï H₂0). By knowing these depositional environments and patterns geologists can predict the location of such deposits. The environment need to produce these deposits is an arid marine environment, which existed in upstate New York after the Taconian Orogeny (late Ordovician) and exists to day in the western United States.

Upstate New York is one of the many places in the United States where salt is an important economic staple. The salt in upstate is mined in two ways

• Rock Salt mining

• Solution mining

Economic Impact of Rock Salt
New York on average is ranked third nationally in salt production. According to the National Mining Association, New York ranked 16th over all as a non-fuel producing mineral state in 1999 with a value of $935,000,000. Of this salt is ranked third in the mined materials. 

This salt production is limited to only 5 Counties: Schuyler, Wyoming, Genesee, Livingston, and Steuben. Currently solution mining facilities in New York are producing over 2,4 million metric tons annually. The salt is found in the Silurian age Syracuse and Vernon Formations at 500 to 4000 feet below the surface and the salt can be as thick as 800 feet.

By Tom Kise
Contact: tk004e@mail.rochester.edu