Saline Valley, a deep basin east of the Inyo Range, contains a large deposit of salt that is one of the purest known in the world. The deposits were first described in 1864, but were not exploited on a large scale until the early 1900s due to the difficulty and cost of transporting the salt to market from this remote area. Prior to the 1900s, salt from Saline Valley was traded by the Shoshone and Owens Valley Paiute.

Various proposals for transporting salt from Saline Valley were considered as early as 1882, such as the construction of a railroad into the valley from the south or the piping of salt over the Inyo Range in a brine solution. The former plan was determined to be prohibitively expensive due to extremely steep grades, and the latter was rejected because it did not provide for a way to transport supplies back to Saline Valley. Ultimately, the first salt exports were hauled by wagon and team over a rough 65-mile road to Lone Pine. In 1911, the Saline Valley Salt Company decided to build an aerial electric tramway that would rise 7,600 feet to the crest of the Inyo Range from the floor of Saline Valley, and then descend 5,100 feet to the narrow gauge railroad terminal at Tramway near Keeler, all within a distance of 13.5 miles.

To build the tramway, 1.3 million board feet of lumber, 650 tons of metal bolts and braces, 265,000 feet (more than 50 miles) of cable, 5,000 large sacks of cement, and other materials and machinery were shipped on the Southern Pacific railroad to Tramway and then transported by pack trains and other means to construction sites along the tram’s route. At the time the tram was constructed, it was the largest and most elaborate of any in the world.

The first load of salt carried by the tram was delivered at Tramway on July 2, 1913. By February 1914, the Saline Valley Salt Company was shipping 9 to 15 railroad carloads of processed salt per week. But it couldn’t turn a profit, so it was taken over by U.S. Steel, the company that built the tram. Between 1924 and 1926, a road to Saline Valley via San Lucas Canyon was constructed. The County of Inyo contributed $20,000 toward the cost of building the road, but the use of trucks to transport salt also proved unprofitable. In 1928, the Sierra Salt Company refurbished the tram after purchasing it from U.S. Steel, and was soon transporting salt to Tramway at a rate of 60 to 100 tons per day. The Sierra Salt Company also experienced financial difficulties and ceased operations in 1933. Although Saline Valley salt is exceptionally pure, its monetary value was never high enough to offset the cost of transporting it to market.

The above description is from the Virtual Transportation Museum Gallery » Mining » Non-metallic Resources » Saline Valley Salt Tram.