Who is Sarah Peldon?
The story of a salty lass.
On Solar Road, near the shores of the Great Salt Lake, Morton Salt runs a processing facility where the company harvests salt from the flats and dries it in an enormous kiln, then molds it into snow-melt pellets and cow and deer licks.
On the side of the factory, you can see a giant image of The Morton Salt Girl, aka the Morton Umbrella Girl, in her 1968 incarnation. She looks like she’s dressed up to scatter salt on Carnaby Street: Empire-waist baby doll dress with Mary Jane flats, navy blue hair cropped in a Vidal Sassoon bob. When she turned 100 in 2014, she kept the Mary Quant style, but Morton’s marketing department turned her back into a blonde. They also, for the record, gave her a slightly softer look, swapping that very straight face for a slight smile.
Her ‘68 and ‘14 versions are a huge contrast to the gee-golly 1941 and 1956 Morton Salt Girls, who seem to have strolled off a musical theater set. The 1921 and ‘33 versions have echoes of Baby Peggy, Our Gang and Shirley Temple. Those early designs were, at one point, a real headache for Morton — apparently several elderly ladies stepped forward in the late ‘80s, when the Morton Salt Girl turned 75, claiming to be the child model the Salt Girl was based on.
“The little girl has been out in the rain with her umbrella and her container of salt for 75 years,” The News and Observer wrote in 1989. “Customers still write Morton Salt Co. claiming to know the child’s true identity. But officials say she has none — she’s the figment of a forgotten artist’s imagination.”
That anonymous artist worked for N.W. Ayer & Co., who also came up with the slogan, "When it rains, it pours," referring to the magnesium carbonate in Morton’s salt, which kept it from caking. "Here was the whole story in a picture," company founder Jay Morton said. "The message is the salt would run in damp weather was made beautifully evident."
That logo is one of the most famous images in the world. You can’t help but understand why people like Virginia Purnell Moore would want to claim to be the Morton Salt Girl. (And you have to admit, she puts forth some pretty compelling evidence that she was no figment of an artist’s imagination.)
One of the weirdest things about the Morton Salt Girl, though, is that she has a name: Sarah Peldon. There does not seem to be any information about why they gave her that name — at least, I couldn’t find it. Perhaps it was the daughter or niece of that same anonymous commercial artist. No one — except for Disney — seems to know that the Morton Salt Girl’s name is Sarah Peldon.
Even the folks at Morton Salt refer to her as “the Morton Salt Girl,” even though they describe her as if she’s a living person (one who’s perpetually eight years old).
“The Morton Salt Girl has been a staple in hearts and homes all across America for 100 years, and she’s still the one that people trust to be part of their life experiences,” said Morton’s CEO, Christian Herrmann, when he introduced Peldon’s makeover in 2014 . “That’s because she is more than just a symbol of our brand. She’s an American way of life.”
That may be an overstatement, but people do respond strongly to her as an archetype — she’s been a perpetual Halloween costume, a collectors’ obsession, even a muse for poets.
If you’ve driven down Solar Road, you know that Sarah Peldon’s wholesome, jaunty image contrasts with the reality of kilning raw salt, which is a filthy industrial process. I don’t know about the other factories, but the one in Utah has always looked pretty ragged, surrounded by mountains of salt that look more like dirty January snow.
There are Morton salt factories all over the world, but the future of the facility in Utah is iffy. The Great Salt Lake is drying up, and the exposed bed is blowing away. Those constant dust storms are full of toxic particles that are making people in Salt Lake sick, and probably making people working right on the shores of the lake even sicker. The fact that the factory wall still bears the image of the melancholic, brunette Sarah Peldon, rather than her sunny, 21st-century replacement, feels apt.
A shout out from the salt mines
Is this newsletter late? It is! Last week was jam-packed with deadlines, so you’re getting one early this week, with (fingers crossed) another installment for Sunday brunch. Thanks for your patience as I figure out how to get back to a regular cadence.
Thanks to PK, Melissa P. and Calf Creek for subscribing …. as they say in these parts (AKA New Orleans): appreciate ya.
St. Louis folks, if you’ve been following the distressing KDHX situation, you should check out Thomas’s fun interviews with former DJs on his Silver Tray sub-Substack; it will guaranteed lift your spirits in the midst of this very dispiriting situation. He’s also adding content to Artica Ever After in the lead-up to this year’s Artica on October 7-8, huzzah!
I was this many days old when I learned what the Morton Salt slogan means. That cardboard cannister has been such a ubiquitous presence in my life that my eyeballs just glide over it without seeing.
Good one, I want to read your poem about Sarah Peldon