SALINAS SALT SPRING
22 December 2025
For millions of years, a mountain in the town of Bambang, Nueva Vizcaya produced salt. It was called the Salinas Salt Springs. It was a geographical protrusion on the landscape that looked like a strangely shaped hill, only it was covered in glimmering salt. From afar, the Salinas Salt Spring looked like a shiny gem in the middle of a forested mountain. It was so beautiful it had been listed as one of the natural wonders of the world, according to the Philippine Information Agency.
For centuries, people in Bambang made their livelihood around the salt-producing mountain. They cultivated saltwater fish in saltwater ponds found on terraces they built around the spring. They also mined the mineral-rich salt and sold it to lowlanders.
The strange geographical feature, also called travertine, had been a popular tourist attraction since the time of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines. It was the Spaniards who named it Salinas, which literally means saltworks or salt mine.
But two decades ago, the Salinas Salt Springs suddenly stopped producing salt.
CTTO
