1792: ‘Intrepid’ family travels 170 miles to harvest area’s ‘white gold’
Updated Mar 02, 2021;
Posted Mar 02, 2021
- Painting by George Kasson Knapp, 1904. This depicts the fathers of the area’s salt industry Ephraim Webster, Comfort Tyler, and Asa Danforth (from left to right). They were the first white men to settle in Salt Point, in 1788. Courtesy of the Onondaga Historical AssociationCourtesy of the Onondaga Histori
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By Robert Searing | Curator of History at Onondaga Historical Association
Two Hundred Twenty-Nine Years Ago: On the afternoon of March 2, 1792, Isaac Van Vleck, his wife, Bata, and their daughter Catherine, emerged from the vast forested wilderness in their covered wagon and looked out at the “Salt Lake.” The Van Vleck family arrived having traveled on a nearly one hundred seventy-mile journey from their home in Kinderhook, NY. The settlement they found near modern day Hiawatha Blvd. and Park Street was called Salt Point. The