This property is still a working ranch and is, thus, private. The family does have tours during the summer months, but I was there in late-October, so I could only get as close as the main turnoff at N38° 57.761, W105° 57.620 just off HWY 285. I took some area photos; the detail photos were provided by either the Park County [Colorado] Archives or the Tutt Library. (
visit link) provides an interesting analysis of the soil. This property is also on the National Register of Historic Places as well as a Centennial Farm. Please respect the privacy and property rights of the owners and do not trespass. During the summer, you may call 719-660-1015 to schedule a tour. The ranch is also available for group events.
"Tales from the South Park Salt Works by Dan Jennings
Just north of the junction of Highways 285 and 24 at the base of Trout Creek Pass is a treasure trove of Central Colorado history, the Salt Works Ranch, owned by one family since it was founded in the early 1860s.
The name Salt Works comes from the manufacture of salt from brine that bubbles up from a spring next to the old Salt Works which still stands on the ranch. That’s the big chimney you can see on your right as you drive north from Buena Vista to Fairplay on Highway 285.
The brine comes from a natural aquifer of salt water left over from a prehistoric sea.
According to one legend, salt was discovered at the Salt Works ranch in 1860 when a wagon crossed South Park on its way to a gold rush at Oro City near modern Leadville. On board were Horace Tabor and his first wife Augusta, among the first to take a wagon over Ute Pass. They followed much the same route as modern Highway 24.
As the story goes, the Tabor party stopped for the night at a clear spring at the site of today’s Salt Works ranch and made coffee from the spring water. The coffee tasted salty, and the pioneers thought it a cruel joke — until somebody tasted the spring water and realized that they had found a salt spring. But accounts don’t exactly square here.
The presence of salt springs in South Park was known for centuries before the Tabor party “discovered” them. Indians had long taken salt from the springs. The Spanish called the South Park “Valle Salado” which means Salt Valley. French trappers called it “Bayou Salade,” Salt Marsh, and American settlers corrupted this to “Bayou Salado,” the name of the definitive history of South Park.
In Bayou Salado, Virginia Simmons’s book about the valley, this same salt-water coffee story was attributed to Charles Hall. Augusta Tabor’s diary merely said the water was unpalatable to the livestock. Apparently, pioneers were more interested in surviving than in keeping accurate records.
As for salt, it was first harvested commercially in 1861 by a J.C. Fuller. Fuller ordered boilers and began advertising “Pike’s Peak Salt.” But for unexplained reasons Fuller quit, and the task of developing a salt business fell to Charles Hall.
According to Hall’s great-great-grandson, Fairplay Realtor and former merchant marine ship’s captain Karl Fanning, the Salt Works was the second manufacturing plant in Colorado. Today, a cabin built at the ranch in 1861 still stands and serves as a home for the present caretaker.
Salt was a necessity for preserving meat, flavoring food, and refining silver ore. But it was expensive, since it had to be shipped in by wagon from Missouri. In 1864, Hall organized the Colorado Salt Works with two partners: a Mr. Lone, and John Quincy Adams Rollins, for whom Rollinsville and Rollins Pass near Nederland are named.
They built a 160'x70' building that still stands, and ordered kettles at $1,500 apiece. Shipped from St. Louis, the kettles were 40 inches across and 30 inches deep. To heat and concentrate brine, the kettles were set over an iron fire box that led to a chimney built from local stone by Italian masons from the Arkansas Valley. The masons made their own cement from local limestone.
Salt was separated from the brine in evaporating pans 28 feet long. When it was operating at full blast the Salt Works could have employed 16 men. Up to 100,000 pounds of salt could be stored at the works, and up to 700 cords of woods could be stored to feed the wood burning furnace. The furnace required so much fuel that the works had a steam-powered saw mill just to cut wood for the fire. Special heavy freight wagons hauled the wood to the Salt Works.
Refined salt sold for $4.50 a pound in Denver when it first appeared, but soon dropped to $1. The less-pure stuff for ore processing brought $60 a ton in Georgetown.
The Salt Works ran until 1867 when a law suit was filed challenging Hall’s ownership of the ranch. Hall’s claim was disputed because the land had been homesteaded as agricultural property, but Hall was using part of it to extract a mineral. This suit was settled, but the legal expenses ate up the works’ profits. The railroad enabled salt to be shipped in cheaply from the east, undercutting Hall’s prices. Because the springs were an inefficient source of brine, Hall couldn’t compete with the eastern price, and by 1868 the Salt Works had closed.
But the real business of the ranch, which continues to this day, is cattle. Hall started raising cattle at the ranch as soon as he arrived, and his great-great- grandchildren still run cattle on the land today." (excerpted from (
visit link) )