Jefferson Davis was making preparations for war along long time before anyone suspected it. The K.G.C. was making plans for the future one step at a time.
Salt was difficult to obtain, so it was a highly valued trade item, and was considered a form of currency by certain peoples. All through history, availability of salt has been pivotal to civilization. The Natron Valley was a key region that supported the Egyptian Empire to its north, because it supplied it with a kind of salt that came to be called by its name, natron. In the United States and Canada extensive underground beds extend from the Appalachian basin of western New York through parts of Ontario and under much of the Michigan basin. Other deposits are in Texas, Ohio, Kansas, New Mexico, Nova Scotia, and Saskatchewan......and Nebraska. Salt has played a prominent role in determining the power and location of the world's great cities.
The “official” discovery of salt in Nebraska by government was by surveyors who were under the guidance of the United States Secretary of War at the time JEFFERSON DAVIS. In 1857 (the basins, of course, had been a source of salt for Indians and early pioneers well before that. some 17,000 acres of it. Salt was a crucial resource during the Civil War. Salt not only preserved food in the days before refrigeration, but was also vital in the curing of leather. Union general William Tecumseh Sherman once said that "salt is eminently contraband", as an army that has salt can adequately feed its men. After the war was over......enter the O.A.K.
n 1869, addressing the first legislative session to meet in the newly constructed capitol building. Butler boasted, “Although comparatively little has been accomplished in the actual production of salt, that little has settled beyond question, if indeed further proof was needed, that we have, within sight of this hall, a rich and apparently inexhaustible supply of this pure and easily manufactured article. It will be directly and indirectly a source of wealth to the state whose great value no one can fully estimate.”:
Patents were sent to the land office but were withheld by the commissioner of the general land office. Nevertheless, the following November, Prey made warranty deeds “of an undivided third interest in these lands” to
Morton, Andrew Hopkins, and Charles A. Manners,
who, interestingly enough, was, according to A.T. Andreas” 1882 History of Nebraska, “one of the surveyors who made the discovery of the basin in 1856.”
Try looking for that Quote on the public A-Z list that is linked.
