Salt in Eastern Oklahoma

By Myrna Stiles Buckles

Salt is a naturally occurring mineral, essential for human and animal life. It is a commodity in the world of trade as well as a seasoning and preservative for foods.

Historically, salt has been evaporated from seawater and from salt mines. In areas where salt has been difficult to obtain (not near the ocean or salt plains), salt has been evaporated from rivers, streams and springs.

In the early 1800’s, there was no going to the corner grocery store to pick it up or ordering it online. In Eastern Oklahoma (before it was a territory or state), there were two known sites developed on the Illinois River, one operated by the Beans and later Walter Webber who was Cherokee and one operated by Samuel Mackey. Salt evaporation was a principal industry in the area at that time.

Samuel Mackey, whose family had been removed with the Cherokee from Alabama to Arkansas in 1819 and from Arkansas to Oklahoma in 1828, developed a considerable establishment to evaporate salt from a “spring that discharged salt water through and opening in the solid rock in the bottom of the Illinois River”.(1) They installed a pipe to carry the spring water to the surface of the river and a pump to carry the water to the kettles on the banks of the river. The kettles weighed about 1500 pounds each.

There was a furnace under the kettles that was used to boil the water, evaporate it and eventually harvest the salt. Can you imagine how big those kettles were? They had to be quite large to weigh 1500 pounds.

Samuel Mackey shipped salt up and down the Illinois River supplying a large demand and furnished lodging and food to travelers who passed that way. “He died in 1839 and his sons, James and W.T. succeeded to his business.” (1)

These sites were turned over to Cherokee Tribal members ( Webber and Mackey) following their removal from Arkansas to Oklahoma Territory.

While Mackey and others were making salt for the masses, women were surviving as best they could with what they had. One such story recorded in the Chronicles of Oklahoma is below:

“While our men ancestors were gone somewhere to get salt, our women dug up the smokehouse dirt floors where salty meat had hung and dripped.

They boiled this in huge iron wash-pots and strained the water and evaporated it to get salt.” (2)

This is a description of a similar facility in Kentucky around the same time frame and gives us an idea of how big of an operation these sites could be:

At this time they had one furnace with 40 kettles, which six to 10 men operated. Forty kettles produced from 25 to 30 bushels of salt per day. This was shipped to settlements along the Missouri River and to St. Louis, where it sold for $2 to $2.50 per bushel.

The salt works were later expanded by enlarging the existing furnace and erecting a new one, enabling each furnace to hold sixty kettles. Each furnace produced about 100 bushels of salt per day. According to Boone, 300 gallons of water were required to make one bushel of salt. Keeping so many kettles going required twice as many men. (3)

1. Oklahoma Historical Society. Chronicles of Oklahoma, Volume 10, Number 4, December 1932, periodical, December 1932; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc1827194/: accessed January 8, 2023), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society.

2. Oklahoma Historical Society. Chronicles of Oklahoma, Volume 35, Number 4, 1957, periodical; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (https://dc.library.okstate.edu/digital/collection/p17279coll4/id/39024/)

3. Boones laid claim to Mackay’s Lick by WARREN DALTON AND DEBORAH THOMPSON, The Columbia Tribune, Published July 6, 2014 (https://www.columbiatribune.com/story/lifestyle/around-town/2014/07/06/boones-laid-claim-to-mackay/21734443007/)