Historic Places: Drake's Salt Works, 1879, Winn Parish, LA Submitted by Greggory E. Davies, 120 Ted Price Lane, Winnfield, LA 71483 ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** From: The Ouachita Telegraph, Friday, May 23, 1879, Page 2, Column 1 (Submitted to me Ms. Lora D. Peppers, Ouachita Parish Public Library) Drake's Salt Works Many of the readers of this paper have heard of Drake's Salt Works on the Bayou Saline, situated in Winn Parish about 70 miles west of this place. The Works are nothing but ruins now, but the place is noted for its fine fishing, mineral waters, and salt-water bathing. Pleasure seekers and invalids visit it annually and some remarkable cures are reported as having been made there, especially in cases of dropsy. Twenty years ago the writer visited these Works, and in the Southern Times made the subjoined notice of his visit: Here in a wilderness country are to be seen the ruins of an enterprise the extend and cost, of which everything considered, are truly astonishing. The levee itself is a magnificent work and confined at one time a body of water which would now appear to have been inexhaustible. The pond made by this levee extended many miles up and on each side of the bayou. Having been drained by a break in the levee at one of the waste-ways, one of the finest bodies of land conceivable is the legacy left by this once extensive pond or artificial lake. Per consequences, the mills are idle and will remain worthless until some shrewd capitalist comes along and secures the fortune they will undoubtedly yield with prudent management. But that which most surprised and interested us was the exploded Salt Works. Perhaps we are over-enthusiastic in our admiration of genius and enterprise, nevertheless we think in this instance our admiration was not improperly excited. Fifty or a hundred years hence, the curious traveler, though the age of wonders may have then wholly elapsed, will still linger in marvelous amazement about the decaying evidences of an indomitable though misguided energy so abundant at these Works. Here were aqueducts of near a mile in length conveying the Saline water to the main reservoir and from thence to the place of final preparation. Here were huge kettles, several furnaces, a steam boiler, a copper tube about 500 feet in length and more than a foot in diameter, a continuous row of large salt water vats or receptacles capable of holding many thousand cubic feet of water, and many other equally expensive structures, the last vestiges of some of which even are gone, were her congregated in such abundance as to have given to the place the appearance of a village in the very depths of a frontier wood, which was most certainly our first impression on looking around at the various edifices which greet the vision. Here, too, is perhaps the only genuine Artesian well in the State, at least in this portion of it. From a depth of over 700 feet the water comes boiling up covered with a foam as white as the "driven snow" and as clear as the blue waters of the sea. The temptation to drink of this literally sparkling water is quite incontrollable, but like some gaudy-plumaged birds of sweet scented buds, it is pleasing to the eye alone, so strongly is it impregnated with salt. These Works are also idle and will perhaps remain so for all time to come for many obvious reasons. No man will ever display the nerve Drake did, even so much as to repair them. The investment would not pay, inasmuch as the market for salt is too limited and already, too cheaply supplied. The hergimors (?), we were told, occasionally come in and obtain by boiling as much salt as they wish for their own use, but beside this the wells and remaining kettles are entirely neglected. The whole is rapidly approaching a general wreck. Much of its former magnificence will soon slumber in irreparable decay. It is most probable that the great adventurer DeSoto visited the spot where these Works are erected and that this point manufactured the salt referred to in history. Ancient earthen vessels have been found here, while other evidences attest the presence of the human race in ages long gone by.