Halite - Common Salt
Occurrence and Use

Occurrence. A common and widely disseminated mineral, occurring often in extensive beds and irregular masses, interstratifield in rocks of all ages, in such a manner as to from a true rock mass. Associated with gypsum, sylvite, anhydrite, calcite, clay, sand, etc. occurs also dissolved in the waters of salt springs, salt seas and the ocean.

The deposits of salt have been formed by the gradual evaporation and ultimate drying up of inclosed bodies of salt water. The salt beds formed in this way hare subsequently been covered by other sedimentary deposits and gradually buried beneath the rock strata formed form them. The salt beds rang form a few feet up to one hundred in thickness and have been found at depths of two thousand feet and more from the surface. The history of the formation of these salt beds is as follows: River waters contain a small but appreciable amount of various soluble salts. When these waters are collectes in a sea which has no outlet, or in other words, a sea where the evaporation equals or exceeds the amounts of water flowing in, these is a gradual concentration in the sea of the salts brought into it by the rivers. The sea water, therefore, in time becomes heavily charged with soluble salts, particularly sodium chloride. When the points of concentration of the various alts held in solution are reached, they will be deposited progressively upon the sea bottom, commencing with the most insoluble. This process may continue for a long period of time and ultimately a thick layer of salt and other soluble mi nerals be formed on the bottom. The process may be interrupted by seasons of flood in which the sea water becomes freshened beyond the concentration point. Silt materials may be brought in at such times and deposited upon the bottom and so form beds of clay alternating with those of salt. Another mode of origin may have been as follows. A body of sea water was separated from the ocean by the gradual grown of sand bar with the subsequent slow evaporation and concentration of the enclosed water. Such deposits of salt have been formed wherever favorable conditions occurred, and are now to be found buried in rock strata of all ages.  At the present time similar deposits are being formed in the Great Salt Lake and the Dead Sea.

In the United States salt is produced, on a commercial scale, in some fifteen states, either form rock-salt deposits, or by evaporation of salt lake or sea waters. Beds of rock salt are found in New York State from the Oatka Valley in Wyoming County east to Morrisville, Madison Country, and south of this line wherever wells have been driven deep enough to reach the beds. The important producing localities are near Syracuse, Ithaca, Watkins and Ludlowville, and at various places in Wyoming, Genesse and Livingston counties. Extensive deposits of salt occur in Michigan, chiefly in Saginaw.

Bay, Midland, Isabella, Detroit, Wayne, Manistee, and Mason counties. Notable deposits are also found in Ohio, Kansas, Louisiana. Salt is obtained by the evaporation of saline waters in California, Utah and Texas.

Important foreign localities for the production of salt are to be found in Austrian Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bavaria, Prussia, Spain and Great Britain.

Use. The chief uses of salt are for culinary and preservative purpose. It is used also in the manufacture of soda ash (sodium carbonate), which is used in glass making, soap making, bleaching, etc., and in the preparation of sodium salts in general. Salt is used also in the extraction of gold by the chlorination process.