Beimen Saltworks

One of six major salt fields run by the state-owned enterprise Taiwan Saltworks (臺灣製鹽總廠), the Beimen Saltworks combined salterns dating to the Qing dynasty with others opened under Japanese rule, all eventually absorbed into the colonial salt monopoly. Its administrative hub was the Monopoly Bureau’s Beimen Branch Office (北門出張所), rebuilt in 1923 after a fire in a mix of Japanese and Western styles, while the adjacent salt washing plant (北門洗滌鹽工場) was completed in 1936 and is the only remaining example of four such plants built across Taiwan during the colonial era. Manual salt production at Beimen ended in 2001, closing out nearly two centuries of salt-making in the area. The former branch office now serves as the headquarters of the Southwest Coast National Scenic Area, and the surviving buildings and old salterns were collectively registered as historic buildings in 2009.