Leslie Salt

Leslie Salt ponds, 1972

The Leslie Salt Company was a salt-producing company located in the San Francisco Bay Area, at the current locations of Newark, Hayward and other parts of the bay.

Background

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Cargill salt ponds near Newark in 2014

According to the San Francisco Chronicle in 1983, Leslie Salt had "been in business since 1901 and since 1978 [had] been a subsidiary of Minneapolis-based Cargill Inc".[1]

The name of the "Leslie Salt Refining Company" was abbreviated to "Leslie Salt" in 1936 after the consolidation of California Salt Co. and the Continental Salt & Chemical Co.[2][3]

The company produced salt using salt evaporation ponds on the shores of the San Francisco Bay. By the 1940s, Leslie Salt under the dominant ownership of the Schilling family [4] had become the largest private land owner in the Bay Area. By 1959, they were producing more than one million tons of salt annually, on over 26,000 acres (11,000 ha) of bay salt ponds.[5] They were purchased by Cargill in 1978.[6][7][8] It continued to operate as a subsidiary of Cargill afterwards; the "Leslie" name continued to be used until 1991.[3]

See also

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A box of Leslie Free Running Salt, with the brand name obscured, can be seen in The Three Stooges short "An Ache in Every Stake" (1941).

References

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  1. ^ Niekerken, Bill Van. "Remembering the Leslie Salt Mountain: Bay Area's odd, glistening landmark".
  2. ^ Judiciary, United States Congress House Committee on the (1945). Hearings. Washington, D.C. p. 242.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  3. ^ a b Svanevik, Michael; Burgett, Shirley (April 13, 2017). "Matters Historical: The salt of the earth became a busy business on the Peninsula".
  4. ^ Walker's Manual of Far Western Corporations & Securities. 1944. p. 568.
  5. ^ Stephanie Castle. "South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project | Online Resources for Environmental Impact Analysis". UC Davis. Retrieved August 10, 2013.
  6. ^ "Spatial History Project". Stanford.edu. Retrieved August 10, 2013.
  7. ^ "Hidden Ecologies » Blog Archive » Arden Salt Works". Arch.ced.berkeley.edu. November 16, 2005. Retrieved August 10, 2013.
  8. ^ Allison, Louie (June 22, 2006). "Cargill Salt plans to shut down Redwood City plant '". East Bay Times.
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