The Biggest Bore In Vermont
By Joseph A. Citro
Digging for water, natural gas, and even oil in Vermont seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Even hunting for long-lost pirate pillage and Spanish silver seems comparatively rational when contrasted with the exploits of a bunch of good old boys from Montpelier.
Their extraordinary enterprise involved boring a hole through one thousand feet of solid rock in order to find—
But wait! I'm getting ahead of myself again. This will make slightly more sense if we start at the beginning:
Back in the summer of 1827 Daniel Baldwin of Montpelier convinced sixty of his neighbors to put up about $35.00 apiece for a new business venture. That's a total initial investment of $2,100.00 – a tidy sum in those days.
Using water-powered machinery with steel drills and spruce pole shafting, their intention was to bore a hole to the depth of 1000 feet, where they were convinced they'd find their prize.
Work commenced on August 8, 1827 and continued for two years and five months.
At a depth of four hundred feet, they struck water – but that wasn't what they were after.
Then, on January 4, 1830, when they had reached 850 feet, everything came to a halt. The drill got stuck. It became so firmly embedded that they could proceed no further; no available power could start it again. But even if the desired depth of 1000 feet had been reached, I suspect the result would have been exactly the same.
The real question is: why were these Montpelierites digging a one-thousand-foot hole to begin with? If they weren't looking for buried treasure, natural gas, or black gold, what were they up to?
Well, it all has to do with the price of salt.
In those days – before railroads and canals permitted easy transportation – salt was an essential but very expensive commodity. It cost three to four dollars a bushel – a hefty chunk of change in 1827 Vermont.
Unfortunately, there were no salt mines in the state and, as we know, Vermont is the only New England state without a seacoast, making desalination out of the question.
In short, there was no convenient source of this indispensable article.
Mr. Baldwin somehow got it into his head that if they could just drill down far enough, they'd hit seawater. So he and his associates decided they'd start digging. And when they struck salt water they could start a new business: salt manufacturing.
To be fair, Mr. Baldwin's folly was not quite as knuckleheaded as it may sound. He knew that many communities in western New York had mineral springs that furnished an abundance of salt. Even Saratoga, only about one hundred miles away, had springs in which salt was a considerable component. And a study of the geology of the Montpelier area suggested conditions might be favorable for discovering salt beneath our capital city.
As bogus as all this may sound, I found no information that suggests this fanciful venture was any type of scam. All the investors and participants apparently believed in what they were doing. No one complained of having been swindled, and, in spite of their eventual failure, all concerned were able to keep their good reputations in the community.
Since then, no one has ever taken up the challenge of salt manufacturing in Vermont. I can't understand why not. In an age when we have the Made-In-Vermont stickers on such products as Mexican Salsa and even Indian Chutney, does The Vermont Salt Company seem that far out of line?
Joseph A. Citro is a Vermont author, folklorist, and longtime collector of New England’s strangest stories, from ghostly happenings to local legends and unexplained curiosities. Known to many as Vermont’s “Bard of the Bizarre,” he has spent decades preserving the tales that linger along back roads, old houses, covered bridges, and quiet hillsides. In Passing Strange, Citro shares folklore with a curious eye, a storyteller’s warmth, and just enough mystery to make you look twice on the ride home.