Salina: Salt Capital of Early America
Near Syracuse, New York
The town of Salina, wrapped around the western shore of Onondaga Lake just north of Syracuse, takes its name from the Latin word for salt works, and for good reason. In sixteen fifty-four, Jesuit missionary Father Simon Le Moyne became the first European to document the salt springs here, sacred to the Onondaga Nation. Settlers began extracting salt commercially in the late seventeen eighties, and by the early eighteen hundreds a large share of the salt consumed in the United States was coming from this corner of central New York.
The Erie Canal supercharged the industry when its middle section, running from Salina to Utica, opened first in eighteen twenty, funneling salt westward and east. Production flourished until the eighteen sixties, when competition from other sources and the mechanization of industry shifted the center of American salt production elsewhere. The original village of Salina once stretched to encompass much of what is now the city of Syracuse itself, a reminder that before Syracuse took shape, it was the salt that defined this ground.
