Old Petro Grist Mill on Salt Creek early 1900s. Lester Nagley photograph courtesy of the Brown County Historical Society Archives
Pioneers of
Salt Creek
~ by Jeff Tryon
As I was walking along the new Salt Creek Trail, which winds along the southern edge of Nashville from the CVS store to the YMCA, I thought about the key role Salt Creek played in the very earliest days of Brown County.
Did you ever wonder why it’ s called“ Salt” Creek?
It’ s because early pioneers mined subterranean salt brine deposits deep underground in the vicinity of Nashville, all up and down Salt Creek.
There was a Native American salt works on Jackson creek when the earliest settlers arrived about 1820, and wild animals came for the“ salt licks”.
As early as 1823, the Jackson salt works in the western part of Washington township tapped a good flow of brine with a 300-foot deep well.
The early Brown County history of Weston and Goodspeed reports Mr. Jackson produced about 2,500 bushels of salt a year, and fetched as much as eight dollars a bushel for it.
But within a few years the salt was depleted, and after about 1836 it was no longer profitable and was abandoned. However, the 1840 census says 1,600 bushels of salt were produced in the county that year.
The brine was the primeval remnant of the same great sea that hosted the critters which produced the limestone southern Indiana is so famous for.
“ Salt Brine was found in several places along Salt Creek in Brown County,” says Goodspeed.“ Several other wells were sunk for salt, one being about three miles northeast of Nashville.”
“ At the Jackson salt works the brine was … boiled down in eight or ten large iron kettles. Two or three men were employed to cut wood to keep fires burning continuously day and night.”
The Brown County historian Ray Mathis, writing in 1936, said the works could still be located by old mounds formed by the discarded wood ashes.
“ The first road in Brown County was built from Bloomington to the Jackson Salt works,” he wrote.“ When the work was abandoned the old kettles were scattered around over the county and used for boiling water with which to butcher.”
One of the earliest settlers in the Nashville area of Salt Creek in Brown County was Edward“ Ned” David, about 1820.
According to Sam Johnson, David arrived with a Native American wife and afterwards married three different white women, fathered 29 children, and lived to a ripe old age along the banks of Salt Creek.
About 1830, David built a water powered grist and sawmill in the eastern part of Washington Township. A small temporary dam was built on the creek, and a race of about 100 yards provided additional head to the water which generated the power to propel the saw and the milling stones.“ The mill was very useful in its day,” reports Goodspeed.“ At one time there were four mills in operation on Salt Creek,” says Goodspeed.“ One was at Nashville a short way east of the
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54 Our Brown County • Sept./ Oct. 2014