When the Confederacy began experiencing a salt famine after Lincoln began his naval blockade,  the Governor of Alabama, along with ten other southern governors, appointed salt commissioners who traveled to Saltville, Virginia, to make contracts to buy salt and to learn what it took to make table salt out of salt water. Alabama established three salt works at wells in Clarke County (Grove Hill) as well as State of Alabama-owned salt furnaces on West Bay.

2014 PANAMA CITY LIVING article https://panamacityliving.com/civil-war-salt-makers-st-andrews-bay-salt-earth/

Confederate Salt December 1863 raid http://civilwarnavy150.blogspot.com/2013/12/st-andrews-bay-salt-works-raids.html

Salt Wars https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/26/the-salt-wars/

St. Andrews Salt Works Raid https://www.floridamemory.com/blog/2012/07/25/needs-more-salt/

SUPER ARTICLE BOHIO https://books.google.com/books?id=WHdEAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA207&lpg=PA207&dq=%22salt+works%22+%22St.+Andrews+Bay%22&source=bl&ots=uRU8LDXiYo&sig=ACfU3U0L5uc9EL8R9186di7GI_8Bb5sHnw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjM6KrGz9TgAhUkVd8KHfCYAwk4FBDoATAEegQIBhAB#v=onepage&q=%22salt%20works%22%20%22St.%20Andrews%20Bay%22&f=false

ANOTHER SUPER ARTICLE! https://www.navyandmarine.org/ondeck/1862saltraids.htm

https://www.newsherald.com/1.130102 Marlene Womack salt

battle of Newton http://southernhistory.blogspot.com/2012/08/two-forgotten-alabama-battles-of-civil.html

SMOKEHOUSE DIRT by Robert Morgan https://reclaimalabama.blogspot.com/2019/02/smokehouse-dirt-by-robert-morgan-shadow.html

U.S.S. BLOOMER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Bloomer_(1856)

George E.Buker https://books.google.com/books/about/Blockaders_Refugees_and_Contrabands.html?id=_5w-CgAAQBAJ

EAST BAY SALT WORKS http://www.newsherald.com/article/20150920/LIFESTYLE/150919163

1862 St. Andrews Bay https://reclaimalabama.blogspot.com/2018/11/from-page-313-of-official-records-of.html

1864 St. Andrews Bay https://reclaimalabama.blogspot.com/2018/11/from-page-695-of-report-of-acting.html

1916 ENTRANCE OF ST. ANDREWS BAY https://reclaimalabama.blogspot.com/2018/11/from-page-78-of-united-states-coastal.html

Clippings from the January 28, 1863 SOUTHERN ADVERTISER (Troy) deal with a resolution by the citizens of Coffee County supporting Alabama Governor Shorter call for a draft to raise troops to protect the salt makers of the Gulf Coast. This alarm was produced by the Yankee raid on Geneva the month before where the steamboat Bloomer was captured and taken to East Pass (present-day Destin) to support the U.S. Navy post there that was supporting Union sympathizers, deserters and fugitive slaves. In December of the same year this front page article was published, the Yankees burned the entire town of St. Andrews and did over $3,000,000 damage to the salt works on the bay. The U.S.S. Bloomer which had been armed by the West Gulf Blockading Squadron was used in support of this U.S. Navy offensive by the East Gulf Blockading Squadron. The fourth clipping is from Page 2 of the same paper. It is a tax sale notice placed by my Great-Great Grandfather, Geneva's John Young Register. (My Grandpa Register was named after him. I'm named after him and my son is named after him)

George Mortimer West's description of the history of the entrance of St. Andrews Bay https://reclaimalabama.blogspot.com/2018/12/heres-edited-version-of-george-mortimer.html

Scarlett:

But you are a blockade runner.

Rhett Butler:
For profit, and profit only.

Scarlett:
Are you tryin' to tell me you don't believe in the cause?

Rhett Butler:
I believe in Rhett Butler, he's the only cause I know.

(During WWII, Clark Gable trained @ Tyndall)

http://civilwarnavy150.blogspot.com/2013/12/st-andrews-bay-salt-works-raids.html

As many of you know, J.P. Folkes, a Dothan pioneer who was the original owner of much of the property present-day downtown Dothan is built upon, came to Poplar Head after working as a salt maker on St. Andrews Bay during the Civil War. Well, there are many other Southeast Alabama connections to the Confederate salt works on St. Andrews Bay. On the morning of December 10, 1863, the guns of the U.S.S. Restless fired upon the town of St. Andrews and burned the whole place to the ground. On the same day the U.S.S. Bloomer carried Yankee raiders up West Bay to destroy the Confederate salt works on West Bay. One year earlier the Yankees out of Pensacola had invaded Alabama and stolen the Bloomer from where it was docked at Geneva. At the time of the December 1863 raid on West Bay, Abbeville's  JAMES AUGUSTUS CLENDINEN was in charge of the Confederate government's salt works there. https://www.navyandmarine.org/ondeck/1862saltraids.htm

Everybody knows no battles that could have changed the course of the Civil War occurred  around St. Andrews Bay or Panama City Beach but the Union naval blockade and the United States' continued attacks upon the salt makers of present-day Bay County to eliminate the supply of salt represents, in my humble opinion, the GREATEST CONTRIBUTING FACTOR TO THE CONFEDERATE DEFEAT. The study of the Confederacy's salt famine gives new meaning to the terms "dirt poor" or "salt of the earth". (newspaper clippings need to be added from the 1880s to tell the story of how Southerners made their salt from smokehouse dirt. )http://www.historynet.com/insight-ahead-her-time.htm

 In the end, insisted Lonn, the “fact that salt could become a major problem to the confederacy reveals strikingly its complete dependence on outside sources for primary needs and emphasizes that fact as the most serious of its disadvantages in the unequal struggle.”


https://www.jstor.org/stable/30151279?read-now=1&googleloggedin=true&seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents

The location of the coast survey map makers 1854-1855 astronomical observatory on the east point of Hurricane Island was listed as LATITUDE 30 degrees 4 minutes 23 seconds and LONGITUDE 85 degrees 38 minutes 36 seconds. According to John A. Burgess in 1985,"On current navigational maps a piling is listed very near these coordinates in the open channel approximately one mile east south-east of the present day land's end (eastern tip of today's Shell Island). This corresponds with the probable location of a wharf and barracks built by Union forces on the north side of the island during the Civil War. These forces were an effective blockading effort by the Union Army to keep the channel closed to Confederate use. They even built a small prison camp and a cemetery here. Also, the site served as a place of refuge for Union sympathizers who came to the coast seeking help from the Union blockading force."   https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/323050