Barnstable Past: Salt-Making and the Guns in Front of the Courthouse
- attcorin
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Salt-making on Cape Cod, including in Barnstable village, has a very long history. Historian Amos Otis reports in his Genealogical Notes of Barnstable families that:
A salt work was erected in Barnstable very early, on the point of land on the west of the entrance of Rendezvous Creek, still known as Saltern point.
Otis clarifies that the word “saltern”:
Means a salt work, a building in which salt is made by boiling or solar evaporation.
It is lost to time who owned that first salt work in Barnstable Village, although Otis notes that it may have been located on “Lothrop land.” His best guess was that one of the earliest emigrants to Barnstable village, James Cudworth, “was the first who manufactured salt in Barnstable.” Otis adds that the method used was likely that:
A pond was dug on the high meadow, and a dyke thrown up around it to retain the water, and prevent the ingress of more than was wanted. When the water was reduced to a weak brine by solar evaporation, it was conveyed to pans and the process completed by boiling.
Otis later notes that during the American Revolution (1765-83), Nathaniel Gorham (1726-1800) “manufactured salt at Sandy Neck by boiling sea-water,” remarking that it was “a slow and toilsome process.”
Crocker’s Saltworks, Barnstable
Mary Sprague writes in 1964 that by the early 1800s “there were several saltworks in Barnstable Village” including one owned by Loring Crocker (1774-1841) at the “Common Fields” at the end of Millway. In 1828, Crocker was awarded “a silver medal” from the directors of the New England Society for the Promotion of Manufacturers and the Mechanics Arts “for the best specimen of American salt.” In a record year, he produced 4000 bushels of pure salt and 100 barrels of Epsom Salts. He steadily bought up land from his neighbors, and by 1843 he owned 17000 running feet of vats in an area adjacent the harbor that is now densely populated by houses.
Housing at the end of Mill Way on the Former Saltworks
Sprague reports that water was drawn from the ocean by a pump that was driven by large windmills.
Crocker’s Windmills
Hollowed out wooden logs, joined together, then acted as pipes to convey the water to, and between hip-roofed evaporation vats or “rooms” organized from high to low ground: from “first class” next to the ocean (also called the “water room”), through “the pickle room,” “the lime room,” and then finally “the salt room.” The salt crystals that formed in the salt room were then raked and shoveled into the “Salt Store.” The roofs would be opened in the sunshine to facilitate evaporation, and would be promptly closed if it rained. The process took months from spring to early fall every year. Seawater was pumped into the water room, and over the weeks that followed, the increasingly concentrated brine would gravitate to the lower rooms.
Crocker’s Salt Rooms
Before refrigeration, salt was a very important and valuable commodity. It was referred to as “white gold.” Without salt, Cape Cod’s fishing industry could not have thrived. Before the railroad, the only economical way to provide salt was to make it locally. The industry declined in 1834 when a Federal import duty was reduced. That made cheaper, foreign-produced salt more readily available. The nail in the coffin was then the arrival of the railroad to the Cape, which facilitated the transport not only of foreign salt, but cheaper salt, mined, or manufactured elsewhere in the United States and beyond. At that point, the production of salt locally was no longer profitable.
However, Crocker’s saltworks left their mark on history. Locally produced salt was so important to New England’s economy that during the War of 1812, the British specifically targeted it. A British warship arrived in Barnstable Harbor and threatened to destroy Crocker’s saltworks unless a ransom was paid of $6000! Crocker and the local “Committee of Safety” sought help from Boston, and four cast-iron cannons were sent to Barnstable. Two were mounted in the “Common Fields” at the end of Mill Way. The remaining two were mounted at Salteen Point at the end of Rendezvous Lane. The guns did the trick and the British left without damage or payment. Many years later, in 1921, two of the cannons were placed in front of Barnstable County Court House, where they remain to this day.
Sources:
Sprague M., A Bit of Nostalgia (1964)
Quinn W.P., The Saltworks of Historic Cape Cod, Parnassus Imprints (1993)
