180 



Report of the State Geologist. 



A boring 400 feet deep through olive and bluish shales alternating with 

 sandstone, was made in 1827 to 1838 at one of the strongest springs. The 

 quantity and strength of the brine was found to increase to some extent, but 

 not sufficiently to make it of commercial value. 



In the town of Connewango, Cattaraugus county, several weak brine 

 springs have been observed, and near one a shaft was sunk in which brine 

 was found that yielded "about a teaspoonful of salt to a pail of water." 



An unimportant brine spring is mentioned by Dr. L. H. Beck as having 

 been found four miles northwest from Delhi, Delaware county, at an elevation 

 of 1384 feet A. T. and another in the same county, three and one-half miles 

 from Colchester. 



Doubtless there were many other springs that produced brine sufficiently 

 strong to yield salt, when the need was greater than the labor required to 

 evaporate the*water. Located as they were within comparatively easy distances 

 of all parts of the central and western portions of the state, these brine springs 

 were of the greatest importance to the pioneer settlers, and the benefit derived 

 from them could hardly be estimated in money. But when good wagon roads 

 and railways, and especially the system of canals, had reduced the cost of 

 transportation to the low figure that has prevailed for the last fifty or 

 more years, all but one of these reservoirs of brine have fallen into disuse, 

 have become neglected and overgrown, or in many cases dried up and 

 forgotten. 



The sole exception is in the Salt Springs Reservation at Syracuse, where the 

 strength of the brine is very much greater than at any of the others and the sup- 

 ply inexhaustible. 



The Salt Springs at Syracuse, History and Geology. So much has been 

 written in regard to this subterranean reservoir that the following brief 

 historical sketch condensed from the reports of the superintendents and from 

 the writings of Dr. L. H. Beck, Mr. Vanuxem, Hon. George Geddes, Dr. F. E. 

 Englehardt and others, will suffice for the present purpose. 



In the journal of Father Lallemont, a French missionary from Canada 

 who visited that region in 1G45-G, a salt spring is mentioned as issuing from 

 the banks of Onondaga lake. This is the earliest historical record pertaining 

 to the famous Onondaga Salt Springs. Another missionary, Father Le Moyne, 

 slates that in 1654 he visited a spring here that the Indians declared "was 

 fouled by an evil spirit," from which it has been incautiously inferred 

 (hat they did not use salt, and had no knowledge of it. Le Moyne made a 

 small quantity of salt from the water and carried it to Quebec. 



