| From the Saltville Confederate
Times, undated: Harper's Magazine described a more peaceful
Saltville in the years before the war: Commemorative newspaper
published in Saltville, no publisher listed, copy available at
Saltville town library. Found in Virginia Minerals, Commonwealth of
Virginia, Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy, Richmond,
Virginia. Vol. 42, August 1996 "Geology and the Civil War in
Southwestern Virginia: The Smyth County Salt Works. Article quoted
is on page 25. The Salt Works described was on a branch of the
Virginia & Tennessee RR. |
|
|
| A fascinating sketch of the Saltville
area appeared in an 1857 article in Harper's magazine (reprinted in
Saltville Confederate Times, undated) that gives a detailed account
of how the salt was manufactured in the mid-nineteenth century: |
| |
| "The salt is procured by sinking wells
to the depth of the salt bed, when the water rises within forty-six
feet of the surface, and is raised from thence by pumps into large
tanks or reservoirs elevated a convenient distance above the
surface. The brine thus procured is a saturated solution, and for
every hundred gallons yields twenty-two gallons of pure salt. |
| The process of manufacturing it is
perfectly simple. An arched furnace is constructed, probably a
hundred and fifty feet in length, with the doors at one end and the
chimney at the other. Two rows of heavy iron kettles, shaped like
shallow bowls, are built into the top of the furnace -- in the
largest works from eighty to a hundred in number. |
| Large wooden pipes convey the brine from
the tanks to these kettles, where the water is evaporated by
boiling, while the salt crystallizes and is precipitated. During the
operation a white saline vapor rises from the boilers, the
inhalation of which is said to cure diseases of the lungs and
throat. |
| At regular intervals an attendant goes
round, and with a mammoth ladle dips out the slat, chucking it into
loosely woven split baskets, which are placed in pairs over the
boilers. Here it drains and dries until the dipper has gone his
round with the ladle. It is then thrown into the salt sheds, immense
magazines that occupy the whole length of the buildings on either
side of the furnaces. |
| This process continues day and night
without intermission for about a week, when it becomes necessary to
cool off to clean the boilers, which have become thickly coated with
a sedimentary deposit which impedes the transmission of heat. |
| This incrustation, sometimes called
pan-stone, is principally composed of the sulphates of lime and
soda, and its removal is the most troublesome and least entertaining
part of the business. |
| The salt thus manufactured is of the
purest quality, white and beautiful as the driven snow. Indeed, on
seeing the men at work in the magazines with pick and shovel, a
novice would swear they were working in a snow-bank; while the pipes
and reservoirs, which at every leak become coated over with the
snowy concretions, sparkling like hoar-frost and icicles in the sun,
serve to confirm the wintry illusion." |
| |
| This is the technology that produced the
Smyth County salt during the Civil War. |
| |
| {Union efforts to destroy the
salt works failed until General George Stoneman defeated the small
Confederate forces in the area on December 20, 1864 and spent a day
"destroying" the works. They had, however, destroyed fewer than
two-thirds of the sheds and less than one-third of the kettles. The
works were in operation again several weeks later. Final destruction
came in the last days of the war.} |