530 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE SALT-DEPOSITS OF WESTEEIST NEW YORK. 



By FKEDERIC G. MATHER. 



WYOMING County, in the State of New York, is bounded on the 

 southeast by the wonderful gorge that has made famous the 

 mighty leaps of the Genesee River at Portage. A few miles to the 

 north is the plateau which holds the crystal waters of Silver Lake ; 

 while still farther to the north and west rise the head- waters of Oatka 

 Creek, which flows in a northeasterly direction through the county of 

 Genesee, and empties into the river of that name just before it comes 

 to Rochester. The Oatka was formerly called Allen's Creek, after a 

 resolute pioneer. The valley and the county were named Wyoming, 

 from a striking similarity to the valley in Pennsylvania which once 

 received the murderous visit of the savage, and which has been im- 

 mortalized in the verse of Campbell. Warsaw, the shire-town of 

 Wyoming, most romantically situated near the source of the creek, 

 was called by the Indians " Chi-nose-heh-geh," or " on the side of the 

 valley." The village of to-day numbers but twenty-five hundred in- 

 habitants, although the region all about has been settled nearly one 

 hundred years, and although a prominent railroad skirts the valley on 

 either edge. All about is a most excellent farming-land, second only 

 to the Genesee Valley. The butter and cheese are of the best quality, 

 and they find a ready sale in Buffalo or in Rochester, either metropolis 

 being less than fifty miles away. This valley, hitherto so peaceful, is 

 now the center of a business activity that bids fair to be permanent, 

 and that will reduce by one the number of staple articles for which 

 the United States has hitherto depended upon foreign countries. 



Over forty years ago extensive surveys were made from Oswego 

 to Niagara, and salt-springs were found in many places. In the hol- 

 lows toward Lake Ontario the brine was discovered in such quanti- 

 ties as to make unnecessary any additional salting of the cattle that 

 were pastured in the vicinity. It was also discovered that salt might 

 be found at the south of this belt, but not without considerable boring. 

 No one, however, suspected that the valley would yield salt as far up 

 as Warsaw. Therefore, when the Vacuum Oil Company, of Roches- 

 ter, commenced to bore for oil at Wyoming, just north of Warsaw, the 

 enterprise was thought to be only a natural extension of the oil-fields 

 of Pennsylvania, which lie fifty miles or so to the southward. The 

 man who directed the boring had been a boy in the Wyoming Valley, 

 and he had enough faith in the existence of oil to lease the neighbor- 

 ing farms for ninety-nine years, with the agreement that he]would put 

 down a test-well ; that, if successful, a well should go down on every 

 man's farm ; and that the owner of the farm should have one eighth of 

 the product in every case. Oil was not found, but brine came up in 

 sufficient quantities to show that the salt was there. The treasure was 



