Both are simply salt. The only difference is the size of the crystals and the amount and type of trace minerals or additives that are included. Table salt usually contains iodine. Rock salt, which is very coarse, often includes an additive to prevent clumping. In most instances, table salt is evaporated out of ocean water or a brine solution.

Halite is another word for salt.

To melt ice, salt lowers the freezing point of water. When rock salt is applied properly, small amounts of salt partially melt the ice and form a brine solution. This solution flows under the ice and breaks the bond between the ice and the pavement. This enables the snow plows to remove the ice from the roads.

The salt bed that we mine is approximately 400 million years old. 

We produce over three million tons of salt a year. 

Currently, more than 225 million tons are available to mine over the decades to come. 

Sodium Chloride, NaCl, or salt, is found naturally throughout the earth, in rocks and in the sea. It is the only rock consumed by people.

Salt companies would use a well to pump out brine (salty water) from the earth, then would evaporate the water to form the salt. 

in 1998, American Rock Salt built a production shaft that reaches 1,433 feet into the earth. This is the shaft that brings our dedicated miners underground everyday to work. 

The first construction of a shaft salt mine in western New York was completed in Livingston County in 1884. Previously, all other facilities were wells sunk for evaporation of salt.