No cars, no road salt: How one Midwestern community avoids salt all winter

Chicago — like so many other frigid American cities — can’t seem to kick its dependence on road salt. In our last episode, we learned how winter weather on both ends of the thermometer can impact the local economy. Some businesses come out on top during the coldest winters: auto mechanics repairing cars when they hit a pothole, snow plow companies shoveling out small businesses and rock salt providers when the roads get icy. But chloride from salt is harmful to both our natural and built environments. You’d be hard-pressed to find a cold-weather community that avoids road salt altogether, but we found one! In this encore presentation, we visit a place way up north, Mackinac Island, Michigan. Dominick Miller, chief of marketing at the Mackinac State Historic Parks, tells us about how the island deals with snow and ice in the winter without laying down a single grain of salt. And it has a lot to do with the fact that cars have been banned on Mackinac Island for over a century.

You can listen to No cars, no road salt: How one Midwestern community avoids salt all winter online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

No cars, no road salt: How one Midwestern community avoids salt all winter is an episode from Curious City by WBEZ Chicago.

This episode is 00:09:23 long.

This episode was published on Feb 26, 2026.

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