nancy: jq dickinson's salt-works is the revival of a family business.arted in the early 1800s. my ancestors started evaporating and crystallizing salt with 50 other manufacturers in the region which made this little

nancy: jq dickinson's salt-works is the revival of a family business. it started in the early 1800s. my ancestors started evaporating and crystallizing salt with 50 other manufacturers in the region which made this little valley in west virginia the largest salt producing region in the country. we are on top of a trapped ancient sea, a 600 million-year-old source. this has been dissolved by a freshwater aquifer which means it runs under us like a salty river. this was pushing up in springs and places, which is how it was discovered, mainly by large animals. deer and elk and buffalo were here. native americans came for hunting and gathering salt for themselves, and as european settlers moved west across allegheny mountains they found this valuable source of salt, which we take for granted today, how important salt was before refrigeration. the salt industry really started to grow in the early 1800s. the ruffner family, the dickinsons, really started to grow this industry. and it was an industry that grew on the backs of slaves. valley was one of the larg