THE GEOLOGY OF THE SYRACUSE QUADRANGLE 33 



in the city is shown by the great number of casts or hopper-shaped 

 imprints of the salt crystals. Under favorable conditions these 

 hopper-shaped crystals were formed several inches in diameter. 



The leaching out of the salt permitting the settling of the over- 

 lying beds would cause considerable disturbance in structure of 

 these beds. Some folding and faulting does occur but apparently 

 much less than one would expect, from which the inference is drawn 

 that the salt beds probably were never so thick at Syracuse as they 

 are farther south and west. 



The salt industry at Syracuse is older than the city. Even before 

 the days of the pioneers salt was obtained here by the Indians and 

 the Jesuit missionaries, and since the first settlement by the whites 

 the industry has been a continuous one. The first salt was ob- 

 tained by boiling the water from the salt springs. When the springs 

 failed to furnish a sufficient supply, wells were sunk and the water 

 pumped to the surface. These wells are sunk in the sands and 

 gravels on the flat at the east end of Onondaga lake where the 

 water was found to be salty but no rock salt was found. The wells 

 range in depth from 80 to 340 feet. To settle definitely the ques- 

 tion whether or not salt occurred in solid beds under the area, two 

 wells were drilled in 1884 to depths of several hundred feet. The 

 State well was drilled at the south end of the lake and the Gale well 

 on the east side of the lake; the former was sunk to a depth of 1600 

 feet and the latter 1969 feet, but no rock salt was found in either 

 one of the wells. In the latter, brine was found at 485 feet, 532 

 feet, 1395 feet and 1500 feet. 



It was long suspected by geologists that the salt in the brine 

 springs and the wells at Syracuse was leached by the ground waters 

 from beds of salt south of the city where they were protected by a 

 great thickness of overlying rocks from the rapid action of the 

 surface water. The existence of such beds was proved by the 

 borings of the Solvay Process Company in the Onondaga valley 

 south of the city. This company sank a well in 1881 at Jamesville 

 to a depth of 1040 feet and abandoned it without finding rock salt. 

 In 1882 they sank a well at Cedarvale about 10 miles southwest 

 of the city to a depth of 1 157 feet. Brine was obtained at a depth 

 of 500 feet but no rock salt. In 1888 the company put down an- 

 other well said to be near the center of the valley. This well was 

 abandoned at a depth of 400 feet because the tube collapsed in a 

 bed of quicksand. The next well was bored 1400 feet east of the 

 latter and in this a bed of rock salt was struck at a depth of 1216 



