Why Manistee is Called “The Salt City of the Inland Seas”

Before we get to where Manistee became involved with the Morton Salt Company, let’s give a brief intro about Morton...

The Morton Salt Company began in 1848 as Richmond & Company, an agent for Ondondaga Salt, with headquarters in Chicago. In 1889, Joy Morton bought up a majority of the business and renamed it Joy Morton & Company. In 1910 it went through a minor name change as the Morton Salt Company.

In 1914, the Morton Salt girl made her advertising debut: “When it rains, it pours.” The slogan was accompanied by the image of a little girl walking with an umbrella through the rain, bringing home a container of Morton Salt; unbeknownst to her, the spout was open and the salt was pouring out on the ground behind her. This idea was pitched after all the major ideas failed. It was just an afterthought but executives loved it, and that was that. The Morton Girl has become one of the top ten advertising icons in the world.

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As far as Manistee, it had been an extremely successful lumber town in the mid-to-late 1800s. In 1879, a geologist traveled to Manistee and convinced lumberman Charles Reitz there was a huge vein of salt underneath the town. Reitz was part owner of a sawmill and had access to the funds needed to drill and look for the salt.

After huge sums of money and almost a year later, the salt was discovered after drilling to almost 2,000 feet. This discovery did not go unnoticed by the other sawmill owners in the territory; they also began drilling for salt and ultimately were successful as well.

Manistee was soon referred to as “The Salt City of the Inland Seas” cranking out over a million barrels of salt each year as the 19th Century came to a close.

With the timber being depleted, the lumber business was on a downslide; many sawmills closed by the 1910s, meaning their salt mining was over as well. In 1922, the Ruggles and Rademaker Salt Company bought the old Buckley and Douglas sawmill and opened their salt factory. Not doing too well, it was sold in 1930 to the Morton Salt Company.

Morton remains in that Manistee location to this day, with their main headquarters still in Chicago.

Scroll down to see some images of Manistee’s old salt mines from over 100 years ago!