Those Giant Salt Piles in Portsmouth Have a Pretty Cool Story

If you've spent any amount of time around Portsmouth, you've probably seen them.

Credit: Getty Images

Those massive piles of salt down by the water on Market Street.

Then you see one of the ships that delivers it.

And suddenly... I have lots of questions.

Wait...THAT Ship Is Bringing Us Road Salt?  How do you get a Captain's license for that? How many crew members are on there?  Where did it come from?  How much fuel does that take? All the questions.

I recently started hearing about a massive cargo ship called the Norse Omishima and its connection to road salt, which sent me down a little Portsmouth rabbit hole.

First of all, this thing is HUGE.

The Norse Omishima is a bulk carrier that's about 600 feet long and 100 feet wide. It was built in 2025 and can carry roughly 40,000 metric tons of cargo.

For perspective, 600 feet is basically two football fields.

And ships this size can navigate up the Piscataqua River and pull into Portsmouth's working waterfront.

That's the part I never really appreciated.  How do you navigate that? Carefully.

We think of Portsmouth for Market Square, restaurants, breweries, Prescott Park and tourists trying to figure out the traffic circle.

Credit: Getty Images

Meanwhile, enormous ocean-going cargo ships are quietly pulling into town.

The Salt Piles Are a Much Bigger Deal Than I Realized.  I mean... HUUUUGGEEE.

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Those piles along Market Street aren't just some random stash of salt.

Portsmouth has been receiving enormous shipments of road salt for decades.

Granite State Minerals has operated along the Piscataqua River for generations, importing and distributing salt throughout the region.

And some of that salt has traveled a LONG way to get here.

Historically, major shipments have arrived in Portsmouth from Chile.

In 2015, for example, a ship delivered 44,000 metric tons of Chilean road salt to Portsmouth. It was unloaded, piled along the waterfront and eventually distributed for use on our roads during the winter.

So there's a decent chance the salt truck you get stuck behind on Route 16 in February is carrying something that started its journey thousands of miles away.

Which is kind of wild.

I have one correction to something: the Norse Omishima itself hasn't been making an annual Portsmouth salt run for years.

It couldn't have. The ship was only built in 2025.

The tradition is the arrival of the salt ships, not necessarily one particular ship.

But learning about the Norse Omishima made me realize how much of this happens right in front of us without many of us knowing the story.

A ship roughly 600 feet long comes into the Piscataqua.

Tens of thousands of tons of salt can be unloaded.

It becomes that enormous mountain we see along Market Street.

Then, little by little, trucks haul it away to help keep roads around New Hampshire and New England passable when winter arrives.