The briny legacy of an ancient sea under the Appalachian mountains is inspiring a seventh generation of salt-makers to resuscitate their family business. Their incredibly structured salt is, in turn, inspiring chefs across the country — most notably Sean Brock — to standardize on its use in their restaurants.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Yeah, they didn't throw anything away, did they?
00:16Sand at 380 feet and water, 380 feet.
00:21That looks like salt.
00:52The Ipidus Ocean is underneath us, and it was a very, very large, shallow sea predating the Atlantic.
00:59So as land masses moved, they came across and closed it up, and then it evaporated underneath this area.
01:08We knew there was brine underground. We didn't know at one point that there was an ocean here.
01:15I guess you can think of it as like a big bowl, and we're kind of at the bottom of that bowl.
01:19So this brine is sitting down below us.
01:23It's protected. It's below the water table, and it's obviously producing something fantastic.
01:33In the 1850s, they were producing more salt here than anywhere in the country.
01:38It was discovered how rich this area is in natural resources, and then from there it grew.
01:43Fifty-plus different salt works were in the valley and over 100 wells.
01:53It was a huge industrial movement here, and it predated the Industrial Revolution in this country in the Northeast by at least 10 years.
02:02It was known as the Great Canal Salt.
02:06It had a pretty good run there for a while.
02:14It was a whole host of factors.
02:16The reserves of salt were found in Michigan.
02:19The invention of refrigeration didn't help matters any.
02:24Canal salt just was not in demand.
02:28From the salt industry, natural gas reserves were found here, and the coal reserves, which were used to stoke the salt furnaces.
02:37Later, in the early 1900s, chemical companies came in, and they needed salt and the minerals that are in the brine for their chemical processes.
03:01It's a tough time.
03:04It's a tough time for Southern West Virginia because the coal industry is depressed.
03:13West Virginians are resilient, so they kind of have to reinvent themselves when they need to.
03:23I honestly don't pay attention to public perception of my state.
03:30I realized pretty quickly that I wasn't about to feed into that, you know, negative culture.
03:35I wasn't going to be one of the people that sat around and complained about everything that we didn't have.
03:40And then we opened a restaurant.
03:45We built this place on the idea that we could possibly help other people open their own businesses if they had something that we could buy.
03:54This is the old salt silo.
03:56The salt was loaded into the silo by conveyor belts from the salt works, which were up the hill here.
04:02The salt either left here by barge or by rail, and there's a rail spur right here.
04:10You can see where the trains would come in here and load up.
04:14It was a rumor that a family was going to reinvent the salt industry.
04:19You think of salt and you think of, like, giant lakes, you know, and the ocean.
04:23The fact that we're here on a moderately-sized river between two mountains and there was a salt industry is pretty fascinating.
04:30All of this, this whole farm was covered with grainers and salt, you know, steam kettles to boil it down.
04:39And so they were making, you know, thousands of pounds a day.
04:42We haven't even made 1,000 pounds yet, so we're getting there, though.
04:54I wanted it to be a product of Mother Nature. I wanted it to shine like it wanted to shine.
04:58And while we're making the product a very different way, we're in the same source and pumping up the same brine.
05:04I wanted it to be a product of Mother Nature. I wanted it to shine like it wanted to shine.
05:20And while we're making the product a very different way, we're in the same source and pumping up the same brine.
05:27People are excited to know that it's revived and they have a little piece of that history, too.
05:32It's not just our history, it's a shared history.
05:46Maybe it'll inspire other people to branch out and try other industries.
05:56Maybe salt can come back again and have its heyday again.