Salt of the Earth
By Dan Leeth

Travelers dropping in for a visit to the Kansas Underground Salt Museum should be prepared for a truly deep experience.


Encompass
Topside entry to the Kansas Underground Salt Museum in Hutchinson.
© Dan Leeth

Fifteen of us cram into the metal box that serves as the top cab of a double-deck freight elevator. Buzzers beep, doors rattle and we begin plunging Jules Verne-like toward the center of the earth. All light has vanished. Ninety seconds later, the elevator grinds to a halt in a chamber that’s farther underground than the Seattle Space Needle is tall.

We’re 650 feet beneath the ground outside Hutchinson, a 40,000-resident community in central Kansas that’s also home to the famed Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center (EnCompass, September/October 2009).

Nicknamed “Salt City,” Hutchinson’s salty past began with a fraud. In 1887 land-shark Benjamin Blanchard purchased real estate south of the Arkansas River and platted a town. To lure investors, he drilled for oil. When his well came up dry, he fled town, creditors nipping at his heels. But it turned out that Blanchard inadvertently struck one of the richest salt deposits in the United States. Twenty-six salt companies soon peppered the county.

Those first operations used evaporative production. Water pumped underground dissolves salt into brine, which is then sucked back to the surface. The liquid is heated, the water evaporates, and pure salt remains. Cargill and Morton still run evaporation plants nearby. But here, instead of using liquid, miners actually dug out the salt.

“This place is really cool!” I think to myself as I leave the lift. And I mean it literally. Topside, the mercury may reach a sweltering 90 degrees with clammy, shirt-soaking humidity. Down here, the air remains dry at a near-constant 68 degrees. I’m glad I brought a sweater.

Encompass
The “Dark Ride” tour educates visitors on the human, geological and cultural history of salt.
© Dan Leeth

The mine consists of a series of 50-foot-wide tunnels crosshatched in a grid of intersecting passages. While basic admission covers self-guided gallery strolls, most of us visitors have opted for the Dark Ride. A battery-powered trolley, which resembles a golf cart on steroids, will transport us. On the 30-minute tour, the guide promises to sprinkle us with grains of knowledge covering the human, geological and cultural history of salt. The gift shop we pass by offers “Rock bottom prices,” the guide quips.

Across from the underground emporium lies a 10,000-square-foot meeting facility. It’s often rented, we’re told, by wedding couples hoping to demonstrate the depth of their love.

“It’s a great place for business gatherings, too,” the guide adds. “Attendees don’t get distracted by calls since cell phones don’t work down here.”

The tour passes the remains of a large fan once used to ventilate the tunnels. To keep the breeze blowing only to work areas, miners blocked off closed passages with gob walls made from loose rock, empty dynamite boxes and later fire-resistant brattice cloth. We view examples of all three.

Anything brought into the mine must fit into the elevator. For the big stuff, that means disassembling it topside and rebuilding it below. Rather than reverse the process, crewmen simply stashed worn-out gear in played-out portions of the mine. An abandoned truck occupies one passage.

In a place where air must be imported, internal combustion engines were seldom used. The vehicle we see ran on electricity. Unlike today’s plug-in hybrids with rechargeable batteries, this truck required an extension cord—a very, very long extension cord.

We learn that the salt mining process begins with undercutting. Miners, using a machine that looks like a small tractor with a chain-saw blade poking out the front, slice slots though the rock at the bottom of a face. Early undercutters bore 66-inch blades, but current models now reach a good eight feet in length.

Next come the drillers who bore deep holes in a pattern across the face. Into these cavities, powdermen load explosives. In the old days, it was dynamite. Now it’s ANFO – a mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil.

“To give you an example of its explosive power,” our guide relates, “a homemade version of this concoction was used to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City.”

The blasted rock is hauled up, crushed, sorted and freighted to buyers. While the salt is 97 percent sodium chloride, impurities make it unsuitable for human consumption. Instead, rock salt from the Hutchinson mine is used in livestock feed, hide tanning and, of course, for melting ice on sidewalks and roadways. Near tour’s end, we get to grab palm-size souvenir chunks.

“Spray the rock salt with clear acrylic,” our guide suggests. “Otherwise, it will end up disintegrating in the moist air back home.”

The Dark Ride ends beside the museum’s galleries where multimedia exhibits cover geology, history and the salt mining process. From there, a passage leads into a display sponsored by Underground Vaults & Storage (UV&S), a company catering to those wanting to salt away their valuables.

Encompass
Entrance to the Underground Vault & Storage Gallery which houses over 100 million documents under tight security.
© Dan Leeth

It began during the height of the Cold War when scientists figured out that storing stuff under 650 feet of earth would pretty much make it bomb proof. UV&S began renting storage space in an abandoned section of the mine. Not only is it nuke-proof, but it’s vermin-free, and unaffected by outside temperature and humidity. Even earthquakes don’t shake the salt down here.

The government became the first to store records in the mine. Private companies soon followed. In all, UV&S currently holds an estimated 100 million documents stored under security that includes video cameras, biometric scans, infrared monitors and more. WikiLeaks couldn’t even get in here.

One of UV&S’s early client groups was the movie industry. Original prints and negatives of films ranging from silent classics to Star Wars and beyond sit on its cavernous shelves. In their public gallery, UV&S treats us to Hollywood treasures such as George Clooney's Batman and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze costumes from the Batman and Robin movie as well as examples of the alien-fighting weaponry used by in Men in Black.

I exit through the gift shop where reluctantly, I decline the opportunity to buy a T-shirt describing the museum as a place “Where the Sun Really Don’t Shine.” A pleasant walk leads back to the elevator. When the next tour comes down, I’ll return to the surface.

In the meantime, I strip off my sweater and relish my final few minutes of cool, subterranean air. When I pop out topside, I know I’ll be back in Kansas.

If you go

The Kansas Underground Salt Museum is open Tuesdays through Sundays year-round, with exceptions for various holidays. Because elevator space is limited to 28 persons, advance reservations are strongly suggested. Tours run every 40 minutes during the summer and less frequently during the winter.

Tickets for the gallery and Dark Ride cost $16.25 for adults. An optional underground train tour is available for an additional $3.00. Joint tickets that combine the Dark Ride with an all-day pass to the nearby Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Museum run $31.00 for adults. Discount tickets for seniors, military and children are available.

Contact the Kansas Underground Salt Museum for reservations or more information.

Dan Leeth (www.lookingfortheworld.com) is a freelance writer and photographer based in Aurora.

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