Onondaga Lake is comparatively small, being six miles long and about a
mile broad, and it is noted for its salt wells, which have made the
prosperity of the city of Syracuse, the largest in Central New York,
built along Onondaga Creek south of the lake, and upon the slopes of
the higher hills to the eastward. An Indian trader started the town in
the eighteenth century, and soon afterwards Asa Danforth began making
salt at Salt Point on the lake, calling his village Salina. When the
Erie Canal came along the place grew rapidly, and it is now a great
canal and railroad centre, with lines radiating in various directions,
and from it the Oswego Canal goes northward to Lake Ontario. The city
has a population approximating a hundred thousand. The salt springs
come out of the rocks of the Upper Silurian period, and are located
chiefly in the marshes bordering Onondaga Lake. The brine wells are
bored in the lowlands surrounding the lake to a depth of two hundred
to over three hundred feet. The State of New York controls the wells
and pumps the brine to supply the evaporating works, which are private
establishments, a royalty of one cent per bushel being charged. The
main impurity that has to be driven out of the brine is sulphate of
lime, and the finer product has a high reputation, the "Onondaga
Factory-Filled Salt" being greatly esteemed. The salt wells were known
to the Indians, and the French Jesuit missionaries found them as early
as 1650, taking salt back to Canada. In 1789 they yielded five hundred
bushels, and they have since produced as high as nine millions of
bushels a year, the annual product now being about three millions. The
brine is first pumped into small shallow vats, where it remains until
the carbonic acid gas escapes and the iron is deposited as an oxide.
It is then led to the evaporating vats, all processes being used,
solar as well as boiling. The land bordering the marshy shores of
Onondaga Lake is framed around by rows of factories and heating
furnaces, while out on the marshes are clusters of little brown
houses, each covering a well and pump. From there the brine is led
through conduits made of bored logs, called the "salt logs," to the
evaporating vats and factories, some going long distances. Everything
throughout the whole district is profusely saturated with salt.
Syracuse is one of the handsomest cities of the Empire State. The New
York Central Railroad passes through the centre of the business
section, the locomotives and ordinary traffic sharing the main street
in common, in front of the chief hotels and stores, for thus has the
town grown up. Just northward, the Erie Canal also goes through the
heart of the city, giving on moonlight nights scenes that are almost
Venetian. The streets are broad, and ornamental squares are frequent,
the chief residential highways--James, Genesee and University
Streets--being bordered with imposing dwellings surrounded by
extensive grounds. Magnificent trees line the streets and broad lawns
stretch back to the dwellings, everything being open to public view,
so that in these parts the town is practically a vast park. To the
eastward rises University Hill, crowned by the buildings of Syracuse
University, a Methodist foundation having eleven hundred students.
Holden Observatory adjoins the grand graystone main college building,
and from this high hill there is a magnificent view over the city and
the oval-shaped lake and its salt marsh border off to the northwest.
The southern view is enclosed by the Onondaga highlands, out of which
Onondaga Creek comes through a deep and winding valley. Back among
these dark blue distant hills still live in pastoral simplicity the
remnants of the "Men of the Mountain,"--the Onondagas,--the ruling
power of the famous Iroquois Confederation.