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It seems that in the days when
northwestern Prussia was undetermined whether it should be sea or land
it was flooded annually by sea-water. As this slowly evaporated the
dissolved salts crystallized out at the critical points, leaving beds of
various combinations. Each year there would be deposited three to five
inches of salts with a thin layer of calcium sulfate or gypsum on top.
Counting these annual layers, like the rings on a stump, we find that
the Stassfurt beds were ten thousand years in the making. They were
first worked for their salt, common salt, alone, but in 1837 the
Prussian Government began prospecting for new and deeper deposits and
found, not the clean rock salt that they wanted, but bittern, largely
magnesium sulfate or Epsom salt, which is not at all nice for table use.
This stuff was first thrown away until it was realized that it was much
more valuable for the potash it contains than was the rock salt they
were after. Then the Germans began to purify the Stassfurt salts and
market them throughout the world.


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