The story
Founded by Joy Morton in 1910, in Chicago.1
The company began in Chicago, Illinois, in 1848 as a small sales agency, Richmond & Company, started by Alonzo Richmond as agents for Onondaga salt companies to sell their salt to the Midwest.
Joy Morton started working for E. I. Wheeler in 1880, buying into the company for $10,000, with which he bought a fleet of lake boats to move salt west. In 1889, it was renamed after the owner, Joy Morton.
In 1910, the business, which had by that time become both a manufacturer and a merchant of salt, was incorporated as the Morton Salt Company.
In 1896, Alfred Bevis founded the Bevis Rock Salt Company, building on the failed Lyons salt company in which he had previously invested and which he had run. His daughter, Florence, married Charles Howard Longstreth, whom Bevis brought into both the Lyons and Bevis salt companies as an executive. Their son, Bevis Longstreth, became president and general manager on his return from service in World War I.
In 1919, Morton Salt acquired Bevis.
About ten years later, Bevis Longstreth founded Thiokol Corporation.
In 1924, Morton Salt contributed to a major public health intervention by introducing and nationally distributing iodized salt. Prior to this, iodine deficiency was a widespread problem, particularly in regions such as the Great Lakes, Appalachians, and Pacific Northwest, areas collectively known as the "goiter belt". In these regions, iodine-poor soils contributed to high rates of goiter and other iodine deficiency disorders, sometimes affecting up to 70% of children.
In 1954 Morton acquired the second-largest solar saline operation in North America, in Matthew Town, Inagua, Bahamas.
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In 1958, the company realized that their salt was not living up to their slogan. A chemist, Richard A. Patton, was given the assignment to solve this problem. He invented a machine that would coat the salt with a byproduct of salt mining, magnesium oxide. Calcium silicate is now used instead for the same purpose. The same chemist developed a total of 27 patents, along with fellow chemists, that expanded Morton's commercialization of magnesium oxide.
In 1969, the name "Morton-Norwich" came into use.
In 1982 Morton Salt merged with Thiokol to form Morton-Thiokol. This merger was ended in 1989, following the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, which was blamed on Morton-Thiokol products. Morton received the company's consumer chemical products divisions, while Thiokol retained the space propulsion systems division.
In 1999, Morton Salt was acquired by the Philadelphia-based Rohm and Haas Company, Inc. and operated as a division of that company along with the Canadian Salt Company, which Morton had acquired in 1954.
On April 2, 2009, it was reported that Morton Salt was being acquired by German fertilizer and salt company K+S for a total enterprise value of US$1.7 billion. The sale, completed by October 2009, was in conjunction with Dow Chemical Company's takeover of Rohm and Haas.
In June 2016, a wall at the Morton Salt storage facility at 1308 N. Elston Avenue, in Chicago, collapsed and tons of salt and brick spilled suddenly onto several cars belonging to a neighboring car dealership. No one was injured and investigation initially found that the salt was piled too high. Repairs to part of the roof had also been neglected.
On April 30, 2021, K+S Aktiengesellschaft sold its North and South American business units, including Morton Salt, to Stone Canyon Industry Holdings, Mark Demetree and affiliates for $3.2 billion. The deal closed in April 2021. Following the acquisition, Morton Salt reduced its Chicago headquarters staff by approximately 40% as part of a strategic restructuring effort under new ownership in mid-2021.
In 2024, Morton Salt moved its headquarters to Overland Park, Kansas, and leased over 15 percent of a more than 300,600-square-foot (27,930 m2) office building there in December 2024. In June 2025, Morton Salt announced a significant production increase with an expansion to be complete within 12–18 months. In November 2025, the company secured naming rights for a new Morton Amphitheater to open north of downtown Kansas City in 2026.
From Wikipedia’s article on Morton Salt, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5