J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works opened in Malden in 2013, but its story dates back hundreds of years.

Native Americans were the first to discover the salt seeps they called the Great Buffalo Lick, a 10-mile stretch of land along the Kanawha River. They boiled brine from the springs to make salt. In the 1800s, white settlers began mining this area they called the Kanawha Salines, and the salt industry was born.