Salt Reservations

The Salt Reservations (also known as the Salt Lands) were a collection of land tracts surrounding salt springs in Ohio and some other states that were donated to the states by the federal government early in the 19th century.

The United States had acquired the lands northwest of the Ohio River at the 1783 Treaty of Paris after the American Revolutionary War, and these lands were finally open to settlement. Leaders knew that in frontier lands such as the Ohio Country, salt was a precious and scarce commodity, especially for preserving meat in an era before refrigeration.^[1] Americans knew from explorers and Indians of the presence of springs of water containing salt. So that no one would buy the land upon which salt springs sat, and thus acquire a monopoly of a rare necessity of life, the national government reserved land from public sale on which salt springs were found.^[2]