Article August 28, 1902 Issue

The Solar Process Salt Industry of California

The Boston Herald

In Alameda and San Mateo counties, Cal., the dull, green-brown stretches of marsh, which a few years ago were wastes of peat, inhabited by water fowls, are now the sources of revenue to numerous salt companies, and the dikes and Dutch windmills would delight the eyes of admirers of Delft landscape.

These regulation Dutch windmills, lying at an acute angle to the earth, and pumping salt water from one pond to the other, are not the only picturesque features of an Alameda or San Mateo salt works. The still, glassy surface of the shallow ponds reflects the distant hills, rows of Japanese trundling wheelbarrows along the dikes and silhouetted against the blue sky, and the primitive buildings used as cookhouses and sleeping bunks. The scene lacks only the red roofs and moss-grown walls to make it Holland,—the delight of every artist.

We landed on the edge of the marsh and picked our way to the dike. There lay before us reservoirs, lime ponds, and crystallizing beds, the entire mechanism for producing salt by the solar process.

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