Open-pan salt making from lead using wood as a fuel. In Britain they established towns for salt production at Droitwich in Worcestershire, and Nantwich, Middlewich and Northwich in Cheshire. In the early Middle Ages these developed into the 'wich' towns of Cheshire. Small 'wich' houses containing several lead pans to evapourate the brine into salt, clustered around brine springs within each of the towns. The open-pan process continued largely unchanged throughout the medieval period. A 17th-century German wood-cut by Georgius Agricola shows the process in detail. Excavated evidence has uncovered wooden rakes to draw salt crystals to the side of the pan, and
Gold mining in the United States no royalty. However, a 2009 report by the US Government Accountability office (GAO) characterizes certain state taxes on mineral production as "functional royalties," in that they take a share of mineral production, including gold production, fr the public benefit. State taxes narrowly targeting mineral production include severance taxes, mining license taxes, and extraction excise taxes. Extraction taxes on gold mining 12 of the major western gold-mining states (in descending order of gold production) are: In 2015 Nevada and Alaska together accounted for 90.3% of US gold production. Gold mining in the United States Gold mining in the United States has