The Scioto Salt Licks - Jackson Ohio
Posted by: 
Rattrak
N 39° 03.157 W 082° 38.255
17S E 358299 N 4323891
Main Street, Jackson
In The John Wesley Powell Memorial Plaza
Placed 2006
Waymark Code: WMW25D
Location: Ohio, United States
Date Posted: 06/29/2017
Views: 5
Front Text:
The Scioto Salts Licks, located in and around Jackson, is an area where naturally occurring salt water, known as brine, flowed to the surface as a salt-water spring. It is known that the spring existed since the Pleistocene Ice Age because numerous bones, probably including those of mammoth and ground sloth, were excavated there. Native Americans obtained salt here for at least 8,000 years and did so until 1795 when the Treaty of Greenville separated the Native American and European populations. Early pioneer settlers utilized the licks in the second half of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, constructing salt furnaces that extended for four miles up and down Salt Lick Creek. Salt was a precious and necessary commodity, and the early settlers in the area profited from its trade.
Back Text:
Joseph Conklin from Mason County, Kentucky, who came to this area in 1795, is credited with being the first American to establish a salt operation at the Scioto Salt Licks. Conklin was a squatter and did not own the land. In 1803, soon after Ohio became a state, the new legislature passed an act regulating salt works, thereby forbidding the state from selling salt lands. Therefore Conklin and others who followed leased the land for their salt operations. Salt production reached its peak between 1808-1810 with hundreds of men producing 62,000 bushels annually. Richer and more cheaply produced salt brine was discovered in what is now West Virginia. Wells sunk to reach stronger brine here proved unsuccessful. In 1826, a salt agent's legislative report stated, "The making of salt at the Scioto Salt Works has been entirely abandoned."
Marker Number: 5-40
County: Jackson
Significance of Location: Event
Bicentenial Mark: no
Additional Coordinate: Not Listed
Additional Coordinate description: Not listed
Website address: Not listed
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