Mann’s Lick, Louisville’s forgotten salt town

It was named for John Mann, a member of Captain Thomas Bullitt’s surveying party of 1773. The land was given to Colonel John Todd in 1780, and when Todd died at the Battle of Blue Licks in 1782 it passed to his daughter, Mary O. Todd.

Joseph Brooks, a Pennsylvanian who had worked at Bullitt’s Lick near Shepherdsville, leased it from her in 1787 and started a saltworks at once, building a hollow-log pipe to carry brine to his furnace; remains of the logs could still be seen in the 1940s. Fear of Indian attack led to fortifications around the works in 1788. Hundreds of workers, many of them enslaved, made the salt, and some settled on James F. Moore’s land nearby, leading to the 1794 charter of Newtown.

Sold under brands such as Little Sandy Salt, it was prized by merchants and sold as far away as Lexington; in 1808 it fetched $2 to $2.25 a bushel, and at its height the works ran around the clock. But the lick was smaller than Bullitt’s, and steamboats brought cheaper salt to Louisville; by 1830 the town and the salt had dwindled. Newcomers after 1910 renamed the area Fairdale, and Manslick Road keeps the old name. The map pin is an approximate point just north of Fairdale.