Salt Works

It took longer to park 20 rigs at the Malarrimo RV Park than it did to drive from San Ignacio to Guerrero Negro.  A Hawaiian whaling ship, named Black Warrior, sunk in the harbor near here in 1858.  It was easier for the locals to call the town and harbor Guerreo Negro than its original name which is too long and hard to spell. There are two lagoons in this harbor, one is Scammon’s Lagoon which is the winter home to the Grey Whales and the other is Ojo de Liebre where the salt works is located.

Daniel Ludwig built the salt works here to supply the demand of salt in the western US.  Exportadora de Sal, S.A. of C.V. (Salt exporters, Inc.) eventually would be come the greatest salt mine in the world.  In 1973 Ludwig sold 51% of the mine to the Mexican government and 49% was sold to Mitsubishi.  It employs over 1600 Mexican nationals, produces over 9 million tons of salt per year, and covers 43,000 hectares or 106,000 acres of land off of the lagoon. They supply 5% of the world’s salt and is mainly shipped to countries in the Pacific basin.

The heavy saline water is piped from the lagoon into 9 shallow basins where is will evaporate over 6 months before it is piped into another basin where the remainder of the water is evaporated over another 6 months.  Road graders then scrape off the top foot of salt and push it into long rows that are then loaded into monster dump trucks.  The high quality salt will be washed before shipping but the industrial salt is put on barges and ferried to a deep port island and loaded into container ships.  The industrial salt is used to de-ice roads and in the production of PVC pipes and other materials.