The rock salt containing gypsum, halite and sylvite has experienced crystallization and deposition successively at the subsidence center of the basin through the evaporation of sea water or lake water, and the burial depths are mostly at 0~4 000 m. At present, the methods of evaluating the metallogenic prospective area of the basin are mainly composed of gravity exploration and drilling combination and two-dimensional earthquake and drilling combination, whose construction cost is relatively high and the working cycle is relatively long. In order to rapidly evaluate the ore-forming prospective of the salt-bearing basin, the authors chose the Gaojiabao structure in the Cenozoic Bohai Sea Gulf whose study level has been very high as the experiment area and, constrained by drilling data available, carried out the study of applying magnetotelluric sounding method to evaluating salt type deposits. It is found that the low-resistivity center obtained by the magnetotelluric sounding method is quite consistent with the rock salt distribution area, and the low-resistivity body reflects the depositional center of the rock salt. The authors tentatively hold that the combination of magnetotelluric sounding method and drilling can rapid evaluate the ore-forming prospective area of salt type deposits in the Cenozoic basin.