Merchandise and Food Shortages in a National Crisis

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

I'm checking into getting my salt from the salt springs or "licks" here. My ancestors got their salt that way,and if they could, I can - I just need the know-how. Critters will trample and paw a patch of dirt near a spring, and that indicates they are licking the dirt for it's salt content coming from the spring. It means the spring has "fat" water which can be boiled down to leave the salts behind.

Lots of places just over the ridge to the north have "lick" somewhere in their name, and that indicates  good place to start looking. Some places over there are so "fat" that the air smells like farts from the sulfur water, and that is "fat" water, too.

Levisa Fork of Big Sandy has so much salt in it that the water is a turquoise color, a blueish-green... but that water ain't safe to boil down for the salt due to the other chemical components (mostly PCB's) that run off from the abandoned mines into it - it has warning signs not to eat any fish caught out of it... so why bother fishing there? Instead, you have to follow the fat creeks to their source springs and look for licks there so that you get water that hasn't had a chance to be contaminated downstream.

The place I live was originally settled by two brothers who were "Long Hunters" and during their hunts they noticed an abundance of licks here, and so laid claim to the lands because of the preponderance of wildlife to be found around licks. This house used to have a well before the coal mine running underneath it cut the bottom out of the well and "sunk" it. The water from that well was so fat and sulfurish that it was nasty to drink if you weren't used to it,

The well is gone now, BUT - there is a spring popping out of the ground at the corner of the house that is pretty fat-ish, so I have high hopes of not having to travel too far - just have to dig a small reservoir to catch it in quantity, probably right in the yard, and I could be in business....

Back in the day, Mt Clemens, just north of Detroit, was famous for their sulfur baths. When I was a kid in the 70s, there was one sulfur bath left. It was out in the open, in the parking lot of the local dairy basically, it smelled like rotten eggs. They are long gone now, but those sulfur springs indicated the fault line below Mt Clemens.

There are brine wells, you can find those on maps, but most of those are waste water wells. I imagine that with the huge salt deposit under Michigan, there are probably a number of briney wells that were drilled for drinking. I don't see why halite from the mines around here would be inedible. I know the the huge Detroit salt mines are only used for road salt now, but they used that salt for everything, including seasoning salt, before they closed it to the public.

Flavor is a big factor in the chemistry of natural salt deposits. Around here it is ancient sea salt basically, so I'd imagine that it would be pollutant free compared to modern sea salt from the store. Things can leach into it from the surrounding soil though, so I don't know, but the raw halite should be able to be processed somehow to be edible I should think.