A group of Euro-Americans discovered salt springs in July 1877 near the future town sites of Newcastle and Cambria. In November 1878, James LeGraves began mining the salt and shipping it by freight wagon to the Black Hills gold mines, where it was used in chlorinating extracted gold and silver. He erected a furnace with two evaporating pans to collect the salt and prospered for the next six years. When the railroad reached Rapid City, cheaper salt became available and LeGraves’ equipment began to wear out, leading him to end his salt mining business in 1884. The springs then remained out of production while commercial coal mining began in 1887, leading to the establishment of Cambria a few miles away. By 1905 the Cambria coal mines were in full production, and the Cambria Salt Company organized to process the 35,000 pounds of salt produced every 24 hours from the nearby springs. The company laid a pipeline three and one-half miles to Cambria, where its salt plant was located, sold salt to coal companies, and also shipped it to the Black Hills. Seeking to expand and secure its future, the company drilled in search of the salt bed but never found it, and after considerable investment it sold the property in 1909, ending efforts to produce salt from the Cambria Salt Mine.