Nearing the End

Why is it that nearing the end of something (the quarter) always seems to make time fly?  For instance, when you're running late for a meeting and you're rushing but still can't get everything done on time.  To the contrary, when there's absolutely nothing to do time doesn't seem to move quick enough.  I guess if I had to choose, I'd rather be super busy then bored--so here's what I'm keeping myself busy with.

Pink Himalayan Salt

As I was reading the back of a research book the other day it hit me that salt is the only rock that we eat.  I will not deny that I didn't fully trust this little epiphany and started to dive into the idea of all of the types of rocks that I have seen in my 23 years (well, of course not all of them!).  After about half an hour of googling different rocks and gemstones I found this random strike of thought to be true.  Then I got to thinking of all of the forms and colors that salt "comes in."  If you think about it, salt "comes in" a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors much like articles of clothing or the fruit from the market, we just don't think beyond the most common form in which we see it--the table salt that has been cleaned and refined to perfection.

River runoff into the ocean

Just as a recap, salt is the only dietary mineral that all forms of human and animal life need in order to survive.  The primary method of producing salt that I have been looking into is through evaporation marshes and ponds from ocean water/the Bay.  It's a relatively common misconception that salt is directly within the ocean water but geologically speaking, only the ingredients for salt are mixed within ocean water and not salt as a whole.  I'm no scientist but I'm going to try to break this down as easily as I can so please bear with me!  Here it goes---The sea gets matter from two sources: 1) streams/rivers/other water sources and 2) oceanic volcano activity.  The streams/etc. provide sodium ions while the volcano's provide chloride ions and these two are lifelong friends but when H2O comes into play they are still separate minerals.  As H2O is eliminated through precipitation sodium and chloride become one and make halite (the fancy-shmancy word for salt).  Then when we taste salt on our tongues the two minerals instantly dissolve into separates again.  This little explanation reminds me of all those little life cycle or water cycle diagrams in grade school--can't quite decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Salt Mines

Another method of obtaining salt is through digging in salt mines.  This method is considered to be a form of deep-shaft mining where salt already exists in the ancient underground seabeds.  In this method, miners systematically blast through the underground walls of salt and collect what is crushed.  They use a conveyer belt to take the minerals out from underground were most of what is collected is produced as rock salt.

Though methods of salt production are advancing there are always going to be some drawbacks of working in the industry; the production of salt, no mater the method, is going to be labor intensive and will often take quite a while.  I look forward to researching their advances in the future.  

Transitioned Shoreline

Hayward Shoreline

 Walking around the shoreline there is still evidence that the salt industry of the East Bay existed.  In just wandering one could find many things left behind from the past that are currently dismissed by those with any real knowledge or understanding of what was there before.  I feel that providing the general public with the proper tools to take a glimpse into the past and learn how the environment has changed will only benefit them and make them feel more accepted or more "one" with their community.

The Shoreline Interpretive Center

 The Shoreline Interpretive Center was dedicated in 1986 and funded by the Hayward Area Recreation and Park District (HARD).  This center looks at the ecosystems of the San Francisco Bay wetlands and shorelines.  The main purpose of the center is to enrich the community by providing both school groups as well as the general public with tours and activities to enrich their understanding of their own backyards.   Additionally, the center has small exhibits about both the native and aquatic life within the region.  I highly suggest the Shoreline Interpretive Center to anyone looking for more information about the history of Hayward (the only downfall is that they are not open for the general public on weekdays--but that's probably just to accommodate the school groups and all in all it's a good idea to focus on the kids a bit!).

San Francisco Bay Trail Sign

OK, I hope no one freaks out about these next little facts because of the sheer awesome-ness (maybe this is my own thinking but just humor me for a few seconds) but did you know that the San Francisco Bay Trail will eventually extend to reach over 500 miles when it is fully completed?  The trail is also planned to cross a total of 7 toll bridges in the Bay Area including the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge between Oakland and Yerba Buena Island (this part of the trail is currently under construction and planned to open in the fall of 2013).  That's insane and I honestly don't know of any other trails that are this vast!  Currently about 325 miles make up the trail that goes through 47 different cities.  I don't know if you can tell or not but to be clear I am super psyched to see this all open; it will be such a great way to get people out and into the environment to see what is around them.

I hope that  have inspired you to go out and explore your surroundings and use the interpretive centers, historical societies, museums, trails, and the like around your community to see what you can learn about where you live.  Happy trails! :D

What else is it used for?

Common Rock Salt

It is not commonly known that only about 5% of salt produced actually ends up on our dining room tables having the common American consume about two pounds of salt every year.  So, what else is salt used for and why do we forget about that other 95%?  That 95% is a major part of all salt production and hopefully this post gives you a little insight into how else it is being used.  It's interesting to see the various uses of salt but hopefully this will entice you all to look into the products that you use on a daily basis and how they are made.

Salt used in producing plastics

Salt is used for many different reasons which include but are not limited to tanning leather, refining oil, gold, and silver in steel plants, creating bleach, processing foods, manufacturing ice, baking, making soaps, to make synthetic rubber for tires, fish packing, preserving meats, glazing pottery, salting icy roads for safety, bleaching paper for print, adding to water softeners, weed exterminator, fertilizer, textile, and many other chemical processes.  Additionally, salt has been used as a sort of antibiotic for bee stings, mosquito bites, poison ivy, and even for the removal of tattoos (as a little precaution, please don't try removing your tattoo at home using table salt--asking a physician would be the way to go for that one!).  All of these processes to make various other commodities that we use day in and day out depend on the industry of salt.  I personally enjoy having tires on my car and seeing the colorful glazes on pottery but I would have never known how salt has impacted the manufacturing of so many such products.  Salt is not only a necessity for all forms of life but it helps to provide many commodities that we have become so accustomed to living with.

Salt is used in producing the glaze for pottery

Most people only know salt in as a spice or as the seasoning that compliments pepper but it is used in so much more than that.  So many things that we have around our homes or see on a regular basis are made and produced using that 95% of salt that is not sitting out on our dining room tables.  Think of how much we rely on these goods and just humor me in thinking what our lives would be without these materials.  Would we have substitutes?  How would those substitutes change how we do things?  Just thought I'd give you guys a little food for thought!


The little animation below was used by the Leslie Salt Company (check out last weeks blog post!) in a short pamphlet.  I found it to humorous with all of the little descriptions of people and thought you all might as well!

                                

Leslie Salt Company Illustration of different uses of salt

Leslie Salt Company

A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to be shown an extremely amusing comic about the history of salt.  This small book was put together by the Leslie Salt Company and I have posted a few pages below to show the process of salt production.  Though the animation on these pages is not as high-tech as we may be used to, it is still a very nice representation of the process of the evaporation salt ponds.

Courtesy of Leslie Salt Co., from the pamphlet "The Story of Salt: Necessity of Life"

Nearing the turn of the Nineteenth Century, the Leslie Salt Company decided to incorporate many of the small, family owned salt businesses of the San Francisco/East Bay area.  The Leslie Salt Company was the first major business that bought up family owned salt productions around the Bay Area.  Eventually Leslie owned land on both sides of the Bay where they would pump the brine to crystallizing ponds in Newark.  In the 1940's the Leslie Salt Company owned more private land then anyone else in the Bay Area with over 400 employees with an average annual production of 1,200,000 tons.  Following World War II Leslie saw the scarcity of land within the Area and decided to put tract houses in two major regions creating Redwood Shores and Foster City; the company literally filled up salt ponds and marshes to build these housing tracts.  

These groups of tract homes played a part in how Hayward became known for all of its seemingly endless miles of housing.  It's kind of cool to see this transition from the salt marshes to all of the built up industry and family homes.  So many people now live in these homes and have shown to be a major part of the Bay Areas history; the Leslie Salt Company has impacted how much of this has happened.  This only proves that all of these seemingly menial occurrences build up and make the history that we study today.    

But what was it before?

We, as Californian's as well as American's for that fact, forget that this land wasn't always used for the purposes that we use if for today.  With all of our deadlines and trying to keep our days/schedules in order it's relatively easy to fail to remember that the land around us was pretty much in a natural state.  In the area now known as the East Bay there were few inhabitants and the people that were here respected the natural terrain so much more then we do today.

Now to give a little information about those that lived here before.  The peoples that inhabited this area were the Ohlones and these Costanoan Natives lived in small villages along the shorelines of Dry Creek, Sulphur Creek, and Alameda Creek.  Their main source of food was acorns, oysters, clams, seeds, berries, and other small wildlife.  The people used canoes to get back and forth across the Bay and had their own ways of gathering salt.

                         Courtesy of the National Park Service, http://www.nps.gov/goga/historyculture/ohlones-and-coast-miwoks.htm

The Leslie Salt Company made a booklet, Salt, Our Bond With the Sea, describing how the Natives of this land collected salt.  "On the coast, and especially around the San Francisco Bay, The Indians were more fortunate.  Seaweed was a source of salt for many tribes.  Others found salt in bay marshes, which they baked into cake called 'koyo' which they mixed with their buckeye mash."  The Ohlones used willow sticks to collect the evaporated salt from the Shoreline marshes and traded the valuable goods with other peoples in the Napa Valley area.  

I hope that these little bits of information about the area and about salt through the years have been just an introduction to further research.  I can only hope to have inspired at least just a little!  

Poll (cause I learned how to do it)!

Then and Now

So, earlier this past week it was smoldering outside; the weather was beautiful and I just couldn't resist being out there and enjoying it.  I decided to take a walk down by the Hayward Regional Shoreline just to get some inspiration and fully appreciate the crazy awesome weather we were having.  As I got to the shoreline I realized that I haven't been outside in quite a while--normally being prisoned in a department store working or a library getting research done.  So I thought why not, why not take a little mini break from reality?

Looking around I could only imagine how things must have been so completely different--how the sounds of airplanes flying over or cars zooming by would have been obsolete or how the path that I was walking on would have been difficult and unmaintained instead of groomed or even asphalt.  The hills, during the spring months at least, must have been plush and green or maybe even luscious with wildflowers.  As I continued walking and wandering around I began wondering about how the far-off land must have been empty instead of lined with houses and development.  The calling of birds must not have been too much different because at one point I thought I was within a reenactment of Alfred Hitchcock's infamous 1963 movie "the birds."  Fortunately for me, no such encounters occurred!

As I continued walking an archimedean screw pump appeared in the distance (the one featured in the video!) and to be honest I was ecstatic and grateful that such artifacts from the past have been preserved.  This pump was designed by Aldeen Oliver (Andrew Oliver's brother) in 1891.  This pump would take salt water from the Bay and bring it inland into ponds where the water would go through various evaporation processes.  With time brine is left in the evaporation ponds and then pumped through to crystallization ponds where a fully crystallized salt is harvested.  Following is a final washing to remove calcium sulphate and magnesium ensuring the proper chemical compound for the end product and is then piled up awaiting packaging and distribution.  This whole process from pumping salt water into the evaporation ponds to the end product of the salt that we know often took over 11 months.  The whole shoreline that I was walking along was filled with these small salt companies that preformed these processes continuously.  It is fascinating to see the history that is all around us that has been left behind.