Salt licks in early Cape Girardeau County

A factor affecting early settlers and not often considered today is the need for salt. Most who settled east of Missouri used sea salt obtained from coastal areas, but some locales did use salt from saline springs. The most notable of these in Southeast Missouri is the spring on Saline Creek in Ste. Genevieve County, where the French and later Americans boiled the saline water to produce salt. By the 1820s, competition from larger springs in southern Illinois eclipsed the Missouri venture.

Much of the interest in glaizes, or salt licks, by the earliest Europeans centered on their attraction to herds of bison, elk and deer. The term "lick" comes from animals licking the salty soil around the springs, oftentimes lowering surrounding land by several feet. Some of the licks were the center of numerous trails worn by bison, sometimes worn deeply. These trails gave rise to trails and later roads for pioneer traffic.

Historical records for Cape Girardeau County mention at least four salt licks. None of these supported a salt-making operation. The earliest suggestion of salt licks appears on a 1765 map. A Lt. Ross prepared the map during a British expedition to occupy Fort Chartres after the French and Indian War. This map shows "Lick River" north of Cape "Girardot." Others have assumed this is Apple Creek, but the location is inaccurate if it is. A deed from 1837 refers to "Lick Creek" at the location of modern Neely's Creek, located just north of Neely's Landing. If this is the "Lick River" on the 1765 map, it appears as much too long and large. So, somewhere on either Apple Creek or Neely's Creek there was a salt lick.

The land grant of Louis Lorimier Jr. was "on a small creek above the old cape, including an old Indian field and a lick or glaize." The location of Lorimier's confirmed grant places this somewhere on the lower mile of Scism Creek. The last mention of this glaize is in an 1821 deed.

Lick Branch was one of the borders of Ithamar Hubble's land grant on Whitewater River. The branch was somewhere near the location where Route OO crosses Whitewater between Gordonville and Burfordville. The exact location of the salt lick is unknown.

Possibly the largest glaize was on Randol Creek a little over a mile northeast of Gordonville. Nicholas Reveille settled on 200 arpens around 1800 and lived in a cabin "below the big lick about 100 yards on the west side of the creek." A deed from 1846 for part of this land mentions "the old lick ford" as a starting point for a survey.

None of the licks noted in early Cape Girardeau County history are mentioned past the mid-1800s. Settlers had killed the game attracted to them, they were unused for salt, farm development either obscured or eliminated the flow that fed them, and today their only importance is in the history of the early settlement of the county.