5. Salt Works

Tour the Villages
South Yarmouth

Salt Works

Both visually and economically, saltworks were an integral part of South Yarmouth throughout most of the 19th century. Salt was produced by using windmills to pump seawater into large vats where the water eventually evaporated to leave salt. A highly profitable business, Yarmouth saltworks produced 365,000 bushels of salt in 1857 alone. Numerous saltworks lined the shores of Bass River from the Town Landing to River Street. E.L. Jenkins writes of them "it was -- or rather would be today -- a novel sight: those long lines of covered vats containing salt water in various stages of evaporation, while on the shores were at one time eight mills, whirling and pumping water from the river." According to Jenkins, the saltworks supplied "almost a thousand and one entertainments" for the young people of the village. He noted that the saltworks, "a never-failing source of pleasure to the boys," furnished "slides, canoes, and fascinating places to play robbers and pirates."