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Show MIGHTY BED OF SALT BEING SCOOPED UP FOR USE OF MANKIND MOTOR TRUCK AND PLOW USED TO GARNER RICH SALINE HARVEST SNAPSHOTS OF UTAH'S NEWEST SALT REFINERY AT SALDURO. No. l Loosening the salt by means of a motor ttuck attached to a plow. No. 2The iu refinery. No. .! Interior of the refinery, showing the big revolving drum in which the moisture is removed from the crude sail. - I HJIJJI I J ireat Deposit Out to the West of Salt Lake Is Valuable Resource. rHE world's greatest natural speedway. speed-way. is being torn up and ground up anf dispensed to the public in cartons and packages. And je cartons and packages are not in the . itare of souvenirs; their contents form ae of the necessities of civilization aDd irbarity ordinary table salt. Bight along the path made on the aldiiro salt bed by the ti-es of the big Bfcsen Benz. when Teddy TeUlaff rove the fastest mile ever traveled by an. now trundles a mammoth motor nek like a giant tortoise- In its wake l ordinary plow wobbles along, turn-n turn-n ig over a furrow of salt four inches - p. Behind the plow is a gang of ; "jbb with wheelbarrows and shovels, Uing in great heaps tons of the glisten-it glisten-it white crystal Every so oftet the plow is given a ft. The big motor truck backs up to je of the heaps of saJt. Some of the en desert the wheelbarrows and fill 09 bed of the motor vehiele from the p. The truck engine puffs and (arts and rolls slowly across the vast kite floor toward a black speck in the stance. The speck, upon approach, solves itself into a modern salt refin-y. refin-y. There the truck discharges its irden and trundles back to the plowed aid. Back and forth it wends it wav itfl it carries approximately sixty ton's erode salt to the refinery each day. rty tons a day is about as much as e refinery can handle just now. When e maw of the big crusher has been - tisfied for the dav, the truck backs I to the plow and starts in all over ain. eposit Almost Limitless. All these activities are in line with .- e development of Utah's natural re-reej re-reej and with the advent of com- fraalism one of the world's wonders jSrae largest deposit af pure salt vet jp covered is being marred, is disappearing. disap-pearing. But it probablv will not dis--4 pear during the time of the present i Operation. Lite the big copper" moun-fca'f moun-fca'f &l 'eoam. the extent of the salt fJl a auro 's practicallv unknown, gie salme deposit covers" a surface I approximately aixtv-five miles y oy from one to twentv-five miles to, aDd. so far as kDown. it ranges depth from an inch to fifteeD or ntv feet. Furthermore, experience s shown that as fast as one layer of 0 salt is removed a new layer takes its place. For many years the title to the vast deposit was in dispute. The state claimed the trait and the deposit: so did private citizens and various corporations. cor-porations. The case went to the supreme su-preme court and the state lost the decision. de-cision. Some indifferent attempts were made to market the crude salt, but as a whole the tract has been unmolested until un-til within the past few months.- Very quietly the Capell Salt company went about obtaining title to the deposit. The company was successful in its efforts. ef-forts. A spur track a quarter of a mile ong has been constructed out into the beds from the line of the Western Pa cific. a modern salt refinery has beeh erected and put into operation and Utah boasts of a new industrv, or rather a new branch of an old industrv. The officers of the company are V. A. CapelL president: W. ( Capell, secretary secre-tary and treasurer; R. K. Cobb, general manager. v Truck Solves Problem. For ages this gigantic crust has been growing in a cup in the bed of old Lake Bonneville. How or why it came there is a matter for conjecture, or for scientists but it's there. As it grew in size it grew in density, until now it is almost as solid and as hard as stone. Its solidity offered some obstacles obsta-cles to placing it on the market- Of course, it can te broken up with picks, but the method is slow and laborious. Dynamite and giant powder also can be used, but that also entails considerable consider-able work, besides being slow and otherwise other-wise generally unsatisfactory. A plow seemed to offer toe solution in the minds of the members of the company, but horses were out of the question. To successfully handle the plows a great number of horses would be necessary. With not a spear of vegetation veg-etation or a drop of fresn water in many miles, the reeding of horses presented pre-sented almost as great a problem as breaking up the salt in a uniform manner. man-ner. A steam or a gasoline engine appealed ap-pealed to the management as about the proper power vehicle and a big motor truck seemed the best of all. For, after aft-er pulling the plow a while the motor truck could be used to haul the broken salt to the refinery. Experience has proved that the truck was the solution to the problem. Biauay people have h"ard of the Sal-duro Sal-duro salt beds, but few have only a faint idea of what the- really are. A writer once journeyed to Salduro to investigate in-vestigate for himself. Forewarned that the bens were far from anv habitation habi-tation and that food and drinking water were not obtainable, he took with him a canteen of water and a lunch. At noontime he seated himself in th narrow nar-row shadow of a friendly telegraph pole along the right of way of the railway and proceeded to refresh the inner man. In the lunch basket he found a number of nicely boiled eggs, but in vain he searched for salt. He bewailed be-wailed the thoughtlessness of the laud-lady. laud-lady. What good are eggs without salt? Gloomily he gazed about, and with the coming of an inspiration he felt like the old sea captain who sailed the great lakes and stopped a passing boat to ask for a cask of drinking water. Around the thoughtless scribe in every direction, to every point where the mountains seemed to ripe to meet the sky. there was only a vast expanse of the purest salt. For the salt in the beds at Salduro is pure, chemically pure, at least. Chemical analysis has shown 9R.21 purity and a goodly portion por-tion of the foreign substance is moisture. mois-ture. Thus, with good air and bright sunshine sun-shine to keen the salt pure, there seems little need of a refinery. A crusher was more in order, but the new company has installed both in one. The big truck ambles across the field and dumps the crude salt at the refinery. An endless chain of belts hoists the crude salt to a big revolving drum containing many flues through which course currents of heated air. There the little moisture in the salt is removed. From the big drum the dry salt is hoisted to the crusher on the top floor of the building, and after being smashed into atoms it starts on its downward course. It hesitates hesi-tates long enough on the Second floor to complete the purity process by running run-ning Through n big fanning machine which removes the last vestige of foreign for-eign subsances. Another plunge through ft chute and into containers it goes, all j ready for the market. Another remarkable thing ahout this i remarkable deposit is that the supply j of salt seems inexhaustible. Where the truck and the plow scratched the surface sur-face of the bed a month ago a new layer of fresh, clean salt is rapidly appearing. ap-pearing. It just seems to ooze up from the earth where) the earth has been reached, and where the earth has uot been reached the entire surface of the scratched area seems to rise smoothly and evenly. With a surface of approximately approxi-mately 6.1O square, miles to work on, it would appear that before the plow can cover it all the places first gone over will have recovered their normal deptli before the plow ran cover the area and return for a second harvest. Sea of Brine Forms. The present plant is capable of handling han-dling only about sixty tons of refined salt and a limited quantity of crude salt daily. However, it was erected with a view to expansion, and as rap-idlv rap-idlv as business justifies, its capacity will be increased to meet the demands. With nature so kind as to arrange everything so favorably, it seems that nothing more could be asked. Nothing more has been asked as yet, but nature has also interposed some obstacles that must be taken into consideration. With the coming of cold weather each yea r a shallow brine comes, from where no one knows, aud covers the entire surface sur-face of the deposit. Sometimes the. brine reaches a depth of five or nix incn.es. and it remains until the coming of spring, when it begins to gradually j disappear. Through the winter season i the plow cannot be operated with any degree of success, and, therefore, the ' motor truck and the plow roust be kept unusually busy during the dry season. The plowing is kept up continually when the truck is not hauling salt to the refinery and the crude salt is piled in great heaps, far m excess of the daily demand- By this means a sufficient quantity of salt is practically stored to keep the plant in operation throughout the winter months. The rise of the water stops the plowing operations, opera-tions, but the truck can work, wet or dry. All obstacles incident to harvesting and refining the salt for the market seem to have been overcome, and the company is at liberty to pursue its work and at the same time conduct further fur-ther investigations. It has been hinted that explorations already conducted have revealed salt of a quality new to the western country, but its exact na-f na-f ore is being withheld 'until the last vestige of doubt as to its value is removed |
