“Salt works! Yes, I have seen many of them. There were rows and rows of them on my grandfather’s farm. And my grandmother! Well, she wore herself out taking care of them. She had only 14 children. Generally three of them were in arms. Many a time when grandfather and the boys were at the flats (the shore) and a rainstorm came up, grandmother would walk half a mile, carrying one child, leading another, and the three-year-old toddling behind--to the salt works to cover them before the rain came on. Rain freshened the salt, you know.” Salt-making by the solar evaporation process was developed into a $2,000,000 business on Cape Cod in the early 1800’s, according to one estimate. Today, in an age when the Cape lives on the summer vacationist trade and Camp Edwards revenue, you rarely hear a mention of this once great, now extinct, industry. The originator was a retired skipper who had ideas and ever a weather eye for an extra dollar--Capt. John (“Sleepy John”) Sears of Dennis. CAPE COD STICKTOITIVNESS People thought him whacky when they first learned he was trying to make money from the sun and the salt water all around him. But, Sleepy John (an ill-chosen sobriquet, if there ever was one) had the last laugh and rolled up a nice fortune meanwhile when he demonstrated that it is not only a good idea to have ideas but, also, to carry them through. For, salt was a lot more important in his era; it was needed then as now to go with ones’ vittles, though the greatest value was its indispensable use in the curing of fish. Dubbed “Sears Folly”, the first salt-making plant got off to a merry start in 1776. Skipper Sears built a vat, or “water room”, that was a crude affair, 100 feet long, 10 feet wide. There were shutters over the top so that the vat containing salt water could be covered when it rained, or exposed to the full rays of the sun. As the hot sun poured down on the water, salt began to crystallize and the Dennis idea man must have danced a ’76 jitter jig, conjuring up pictures of what he would do with all his wealth, amassed from just a simple contraption and no expense whatever. At the end of the sunny season, however, Captain Sears had produced only eight bushels of salt, and the neighbors were laughing louder. The old sea dog wasn’t in the habit of quitting when the going got rough. Having discovered that production was held down by leaks in the vat, he persevered and found a way to make the vat tight as a drum. The second year he crystallized 30 bushels of salt. But, a labor problem was slowing his progress. The salt water had to be poured into the vat from buckets, a tedious and time-consuming handicap, for John soon learned that for every 350 gallons of water he poured only one bushel of salt formed. He kept plugging and, meanwhile, he was doing some tall scheming. The neighbors were still laughing. FINALE OF A GREAT INDUSTRY