On January 2, 1806, the Lewis & Clark Expedition established the Salt Works here, where Joseph Fields, William Bratten, and George Gibson remained until February 20, 1806. Assisted at times by hunters and packers, they tediously extracted approximately four bushels of salt by boiling seawater day and night in five metal kittles. The expedition had run out of salt before reaching its winter camp at Fort Clatsop, 10 miles to the northeast, and the supply was necessary for curing meat and preparing for the return trip to civilization. In 1900, this site was established on the testimony of Jenny Michel of Seaside, whose Clatsop Indian father remembered seeing the white men boiling water and had pointed out the place to her when she was a young girl. She was born in this vicinity about 1815 and died in 1905.