Salt works once were a common sight along Cape Cod shores. Today, a replica of a salt works sits on the grounds of the Aptucxet Trading Post in Bourne. Salt was in constant demand for colonists who came to the new world from England in the 1600s. It was mainly used to preserve food, and the colonists got much of their supply of salt from England. But they wanted to figure out how to make it themselves. Initially, they tried filling cast-iron kettles with water. “They’d build a fire under it, and it really was the beginnings of providing salt for the colonists,” said Marth Beth Ellis, a volunteer at Aptucxet. “It would take a great deal of time for the water to evaporate, and it would leave crystals of salt all along the inside of that kettle. And they would have to scrape it off, and the result was not a lot of salt.” The process also used up a lot of valuable lumber. By the 1770s, the colonists were fighting for their independence from the Crown. They also wanted to break their