34 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



feet. The first salt bed 45 feet thick was followed by 25 feet of 

 shale and then came a second bed of salt 54 feet thick. The next 

 well was sunk about 4 miles farther north and about 1 mile south 

 of Cardiff and was abandoned at a depth of 844 feet. Since, that 

 time the company has sunk many wells near the south end of the 

 valley, finding rock salt in all of them. The salt occurs in several 

 different beds separated by varying thicknesses of shale. The 

 maximum total thickness of salt here found is 318 feet and the 

 maximum thickness of a single bed is 74 feet. 



Owing to the great depth of these beds, 1000 feet and more below 

 the surface, the salt is not mined in the solid state, but water is 

 run into the wells, the salt dissolved and pumped out in solution. 

 The brine is then run by gravity through a pipe line to the soda 

 works at Solvay where it is used in the manufacture of soda ash 

 and various sodium compounds. 



In the early days of the salt industry at Syracuse, all the salt 

 was obtained by boiling the brine in kettles. The single kettles 

 were in time followed by blocks of 60 or 70 kettles arranged in 

 double rows and heated from a single fire. Some of these kettles 

 were large enough to hold 150 gallons of brine. Many of them may 

 now be seen in the region around Syracuse where they are used as 

 watering troughs. In 1858 there were 312 salt blocks with 16,434 

 kettles of 90 to 150 gallons capacity. The kettle-boiling process 

 was gradually abandoned and the solar process used more ex- 

 tensively. By the solar process the brine is evaporated in shallow 

 wooden vats by the heat of the sun in the summer season, the vats 

 not being operated in the winter. By this process a coarse salt used 

 largely in meat packing and refrigeration is produced. By the 

 kettle process a finer quality of table and dairy salt is made. 



From 1797 to 1904 there were 430,000,000 bushels, or over 

 12,000,000 tons, of salt produced in the yards around Onondaga 

 lake. The maximum output was in the year 1862 with 9,530,874 

 bushels. The wells were formerly owned by the State, which ex- 

 acted a small royalty from the manufacturers, based on the amount 

 of salt produced, but they were recently transferred to private 

 ownership. 



SWAMP AND LAKE DEPOSITS 

 PEAT, MUCK, MARL AND CLAY 



In the lake basins and swamp areas of the Syracuse region are 

 quite extensive accumulations of vegetable, animal and mineral 

 matter of considerable economic importance. They have been 



