Salt and salt work are a powerful part of this island’s heritage. Salt was produced at the Orient Bay salt pond from the 1840s until the late 1950s. Elise Hyman from French Quarter worked there. In an interview in 2018, she described the salt work done there as the industry was coming to an end on St. Martin.

In that time, in the salt pond time, they were good times. The people was very industrious and they didn’t had nothing, no other alternative but the salt pond. Everybody used to work their own garden. When the time come for the salt, you had to come out. That’s what they had. Everybody had to work to that. That was all the industry they had here.

They pick it. They go in the pond in the morning early, early morning. Everybody is in the pond, picking salt. Picking, throwing in a basket. They pick it out the pond, put it in a basket — bum! — you throw it in a flat. They do that all day.

When they get this flat full, they row it in to the shore. Then somebody there in the flat shoveling it out and the younger people come and they transport it on the shore, on the dry shore. You take it now from the spot where you take it from the flat, throw it on the ground, so all the water run out so it’s dry.

Afternoon, half-past two, three o’clock, Mr. John Gumbs come. He is going to come to measure it. He come to measure it and he is the one who putting down all those marks in the book. This is the reaping figures.

Everybody get up and going back and forth. Pack it. You taking it up, to big piles. As big as this house it used to be. You had to go up steps, ladders, to go up. You go up, you throw it down all the time. They got big, big piles. Oh, boy.

The boat used to be coming there every month. When it’s time for the boat to come for it to take it up to Guadeloupe, then they ship it in the little bags. They bag it up, but they don’t bag it before the boat come. It is when the boat come, they call, “The boat is here,” the people, everybody, is going to work.

The people go and they bag it. They had a small bag. I don’t know how much it used to be, but it was big enough for the children, because mostly children was going to do that. They put it on the head and they go and they had men by the seawater to take it from them, carry it to the boat. They take it from the children, carry it to the boat.

You carry bags on until the boat is loaded. They know how much the boat can carry. So that is how they do it. That’s how they do the salt pond.

John Gumbs die. Victor Gumbs die. Everybody dead like that and the people die and went away and the salt pond went going down. You couldn’t leave the salt pond. It had to be taken care of.

As long as rain falling, no salt don’t grow. The rainy season, the fresh water melts it away.
But when it come on the dry weather, up come the salt. Beautiful. There you get beautiful salt. It used to be a beautiful sight to see.

Find more true stories about life on St. Martin in Stories of St. Martin.