Beautiful Plains Museum season drawing to an end
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- Published on Thursday, August 18, 2016
By Lea Heschuck
Beautiful Plains Museum
It’s hard to believe that summer is almost over! With the end of summer also comes the final days that the Beautiful Plains Museum is open for the season. September 5 will be your last day to visit the museum until we reopen in May.
It’s always difficult to decide which artifacts to write about in these articles because there are so many interesting artifacts in the museum! For this article, I decided to write about the boxes of salt we have in the General Store exhibit at the museum. Now before you stop reading this article because boxes of salt do not sound like the most exciting topic, hear me out. These salt boxes are neat because they contain salt that was produced by the salt well that used to be in Neepawa. Here is a brief history of Neepawa’s salt industry:
In the early 1900s, a test hole was drilled in Neepawa in the search for oil. However, instead of finding oil, it was found that there was salt brine underground.
In 1924, The Neepawa Salt Company was formed, however the start-up was disappointing. A constant flow of brine could not be achieved due to inadequate equipment and inexperienced operators.
In 1925, John McKone sold all of his land, which the salt plant was on, to T. G. Murphy.
In 1931, the salt well was reorganized as The Neepawa Salt Company Limited, and by 1932, was producing 35 tons of salt daily using the grainer method for extraction.
In 1935, The Canadian Industries Limited purchased the entire business and continued production until 1941, when a violent storm destroyed some of the building. The Canadian Industries Limited decided an expansion was needed, so in 1940, construction of a modern salt plant began at the corner of Commerce and Mountain Ave. (where the Yellowhead Centre is located today). The Yellowhead was originally a storage building from the salt well.
In 1941, the new salt plant began production using the vacuum pan method. This method was rated to produce 100 tons of salt per day.
In 1951, The Canadian Salt Company bought the salt plant, and operated the plant until 1970, when it decided to shut the plant down and move operations to Saskatchewan because of economic reasons.
Visit the Beautiful Plains Museum by Sept. 5 to view the boxes of salt, as well as all of our other interesting artifacts! The Beautiful Plains Museum is located at 91 Hamilton St. in the former CN Railway Station and is open Monday to Friday from 9am – 5pm, and Saturday, Sunday and Stat. holidays from 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm. Admission is by donation. I hope to see you at the Beautiful Plains Museum!
