Solar Method of Evaporating Salt Brine, Syracuse, N. Y.

Creator

Keystone View Company

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Creation Date

1905

Description

In this lantern slide, the drying vats used for the salt brine mines in Syracuse, New York can be seen. Syracuse was built on top of an ancient salt deposit that used to be covered by sea water over 300 million years ago, which was compacted during the Ice Age to form the Onondaga Formation. The city would become so famous for its highly productive salt mines that it would earn the nickname “Salt City” and would keep the moniker even after mining operations moved to the west coast around 1900. The solar method of drying salt brine was one of the last innovations made to the industry before it shut down, being a very cost-effective method for extracting salt from salt water. The drying process involved pumping salt water into vats that separated impurities from the brine and then transporting the brine into three-inch-deep wooden trays that were used for solar drying. The entire process took around seven days depending on the weather. Both the mines and the vats were rented out to salt producers, with the lots throughout the city being rented under the strict supervision of the New York State government. Salt production was such an incredibly profitable business in Syracuse that extensive measures were put in place to protect the solar drying process. The salt producers designed large deployable roofs that could be moved over the salt vats in the event of rain, and due to the threat rain posed to the salt drying process, when a rain alarm rang out across the vat lots, everyone in earshot would stop whatever they were doing to help deploy the protective roofs.

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