Article July 25, 1901 Issue

The World's Salt Wonders

Salt is one of the essentials of life, and the beneficial effects of its various uses are being better appreciated every year. The annual salt product of the United is about twelve million barrels of two hundred and eighty pounds each. Such signal success has been achieved by manufacturers in the efforts to improve the quality of the product that importations of refined salt have almost ceased to be a factor in the industry. The principal salt producing states are California, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia. The entire salt product of Louisiana is rock salt, from the Petite Anse mine. Nearly all the product of California is obtained from sea water by solar evaporation.

Perhaps the world's most interesting salt mine is that of Wieliczka, near Cracow, in Galicia. It has been celebrated for centuries, and has been worked for the last six hundred years. This wonderful mine is excavated in a ridge of hills at the northern extremity of the chain which joins the Carpathian Mountains. When the stranger reaches the mine, there bursts upon his view a little world the beauty of which is scarcely to be imagined. He beholds a spacious plain, containing a kind of subterranean city, with horses, carriages, and roads, all scooped out of one vast rock of salt, as bright and glittering as crystal, while the blaze of lights continually burning for the general use is reflected from the dazzling columns that support the lofty arched vaults of the mine, which are beautifully tinged with all the colors of the rainbow, and sparkle with the lustre of precious stones, affording a more splendid and fairylike aspect than anything above ground can possibly exhibit. In various parts of this spacious plain stand the huts of the miners and their families, some single, and others in clusters, like villages. They have very little communication with the world above them, and hundreds of persons are born and pass the whole of their lives here. Through the midst of this plain lies a road which is always filled with carriages laden with masses of salt from the farthest part of the mine. The drivers are generally singing, and the salt looks like a load of gems. A great number of horses are kept in the mine, and when once let down, never see daylight again.

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