Eurypterid-bearing deposits from the late Silurian Appalachian basin are often interpreted as having been deposited under hypersaline conditions. These interpretations are based on the close association of abundant eurypterid remains with evaporite deposits and structures such as salt hoppers in the Salina and Bertie groups. To determine whether this association reflects life habitat, or is the result of taphonomic or diagenetic processes, the co-occurrence of eurypterids and salt hoppers in the upper Silurian Appalachian basin was examined at several stratigraphic scales. A survey of eurypterid remains from the prolific Ellicott Creek Breccia Member of the Fiddler's Green Formation (Bertie Group) found that 2% of the 479 specimens surveyed are crosscut by salt hoppers or incipient halite structures. In a regional survey, displacive salt hoppers occurred in the same bed as eurypterid remains in 37% (19:51) of all eurypterid-bearing units. In these units, salt hoppers were typically the only structures found intimately associated with eurypterids, sometimes crosscutting them. The disruptive nature of the hoppers in the Ellicott Creek Breccia, for example, suggests that they formed within the sediment rather than at the air-water interface, and that organic remains might have acted as nucleation points for developing halite crystals. To explain these associations, we present a depositional model in which displacive salt hoppers formed within NaCl-saturated groundwater as a result of surface evaporation in the vadose zone during regressive phases, and only after eurypterid remains were buried. In this scenario, the intimate association of eurypterids and salt hoppers in these deposits reflects early-stage diagenetic overprinting rather than conditions during life. Our model largely refutes the hypothesis that eurypterids were halotolerant organisms based on their co-occurrence with salt hoppers. We conclude that eurypterids preserved in upper Silurian carbonate ramp deposits were primarily denizens of more normal marine or hyposaline subtidal settings.