Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Near North Retsof Retsof, NY

Retsof is a hamlet and census-designated place in the town of York in Livingston County, New York, about 30 miles southwest of Rochester.

Retsof has one of the most unusual names in New York - it is "Foster" spelled backwards, created by mine founder William Foster Jr. by reversing the letters of his own surname.

Retsof exists because of salt - in 1882 amateur geologist Carroll Cocher predicted rock salt lay beneath Livingston County, and test wells found a rich seam about 1,000 feet below the surface.

Retsof's salt mine began operating in the 1880s and grew into the largest salt mine in North America and the second largest in the world.

Retsof's mine employed about 300 people working in 6,000 acres of excavated chambers roughly 1,000 feet underground, extracting salt for roads, tables and industry.

Retsof was a true company town - its original population was mostly Italian immigrants who lived in mine-owned houses and shopped at a company store in a section known as Little Italy, where the mine company built 35 homes and a boarding house.

Retsof's mine produced 134 million tons of salt over its roughly 110 years of operation.

Retsof's mine was destroyed by water - on March 12, 1994, a 500-by-500-foot section of ceiling rock collapsed about 1,200 feet underground with a magnitude 3.6 tremor, groundwater poured into the once-dry mine, and over the next 21 months the caverns flooded completely, ending operations in September 1995.

Retsof's salt is now mined about 10 miles to the southeast at the Hampton Corners mine near Mount Morris, which replaced Retsof as the largest producing salt mine in the United States.

Retsof was served by the Genesee and Wyoming Railroad, a short line built to haul the mine's salt that grew out of this little hamlet.