Passengers on the train of the Ohio River division of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad are always interested in the towns of Hartford, New Haven, and Mason City, on the West Virginia side, and Syracuse and Pomeroy on the Ohio side of the river because of the unusual industry that is carried on. A strange odor comes through the open windows of the coach during the warm summer days as the train passes along through the yards on the outskirts of the town. For more than one hundred and fifty years this bend on the Ohio River, known to steamboat men as “Salt Bend,” or “Great Salt Bend,” has been the center of a large salt industry. The river bench, or highland, along the river, is dotted with numerous queer-looking buildings surmounted with what looks like a huge wooden chimney. At the bottom of each chimney, or tower, says the _Manufacturers Record_, there is a salt well. The wells in a number of instances are pumped with gas engines, and gas engines are also used in some cases to pump water out of the mines. The several salt works are near the wells and generally at the mouth of a coal mine which runs into the hills just back of the towns on both sides of the river. The ability to secure a cheap fuel from coal mines so near has preserved the industry against foreign and domestic competition. The tall piles of fagots or hoop poles used in making hoops for barrels are everywhere in evidence, and one wonders why they do not use iron hoops on the barrels, until they notice the havoc the salt water plays with metal of any kind. The pipes used to convey the liquid are in some cases made of hollow logs of poplar and other woods. The art of barrel making, or coopering, as it is called, is practiced here in all the old-time splendor, and if the scene were transplanted to any European country and located along some of the tourist lanes of travel it would be a mecca for the sight-seers. The queer old processes, the old-fashioned tools and methods, the smoke rising from the smudge fire in the barrels would attract scores of travelers to the scene of the Old World. The strata containing the salt solution lies about twelve hundred feet under the surface, and the water rises to within six hundred feet of the surface, after the well is drilled in. The well as generally drilled is termed a six-inch well, and is cased with iron casing to about eight hundred feet below the surface, where the surface water is packed off with a packer such as is used in oil wells. The salt water is pumped from the well into a cistern, which is generally elevated on the side of a hill near the plant, and is carried in copper and wooden pipes by gravity to the salt surface. Where wood log pipes are used the sight is a very unusual one, as they are laid on top of the ground, and run in every direction from plant to wells.