Salt, for the preservation of food, was essential to the survival of any long-term expedition in the nineteeth-century, including the Lewis and Clark Expedition. By the time the Corps reached the Pacific Coast, they were nearly out of salt. On December 28th, 1805, the captains ordered five men to search out a camp with the proper characteristics for making salt. The party set up a salt works fifteen miles southwest of Fort Clatsop, near several Clatsop and Kilamox settlements in what is now Seaside, Oregon. The men obtained salt by boiling seawater twenty-four hours a day in five large kettles on stone ovens. They produced three quarts a day of what Lewis called “excellent, fine, strong, and white” salt. By the time the Corps departed in February of the next year, they had enough to last the return journey.

In 1900, the Oregon Historical Society identified the Salt Works site with the help of an 86-year-old Clatsop woman named Jennie Michele, or Tsinistum in the Clatsop language. Her mother had visited the site when the corpsmen worked there and had shown her daughter many times after their departure. Today the site is part of the Lewis and Clark National Historical Park in Oregon and Washington State.

Researched, written, and narrated by University of West Florida Public History Student Malina Suity.