Down in the Salt Mine...

---

We left Shepherd’s Staff Thursday right after work, even though there were high wind warnings (and they weren’t kidding), because we had tickets to the underground salt mine in Hutchinson, which was 250 miles away. We drove slowly, and it worked out. We were going to spend the night in Salina, but when we got there we heard that the wind was going to blow throughout the night, and again Friday, so we decided we’d rather keep going, knowing what conditions we were traveling in, than to risk it the next day. Once we got to Hutchinson, we were glad we’d made that decision.

The Carey Salt Mine is a working salt mine, and is located 645 feet below the Earth’s surface. The part where the museum is located has been mined and abandoned~~there are miles and miles of tunnels lined with salt walls, ceiling and floor. Surprisingly, it didn’t make my lips taste salty, but the floor is compacted, and there’s no salt being moved. 70% of the salt mined there is used on winter roads, the rest is used for animal feed, hide tanning and pharmaceuticals. None of it is for human consumption, and never has been.

Another part of this mine is the Underground Vault and Storage business. In the pictures I’ve described what type of information is stored down there, and why it is, but it’s also interesting that there are two other sites used by this storage company~~one in Kansas City, Missouri and one in Louisville, Kentucky, but they’re both limestone mines. They have the same kind of security and climate conditions…68 degrees year round, with 40%!h(MISSING)umidity. And the items are safe from tornadoes, floods, fires, conventional weapons (I’m reading from their ad!), blizzards, thieves and vandals. They claim to store things for small businesses as well as large ones, which makes me curious how much they charge!

We are on our way to Colcord, OK, which is in the northeast part of Oklahoma. We need to be there before noon on Wednesday to set up the parking sites for the rest of the team. In the meantime, we’re in a RV park in the corner of OK (Sunday afternoon we drove through the corner of Kansas to get to Joplin, MO~~we’re right in the corner of the state!)

---

Photos

Because equipment has to be disassembled,
taken down piece by piece, and then reassembled (which can take months, depending on the size), once it's no longer operational, it's discarded in one of the empty shafts. Everything down there is covered with rust.

When the mine opened they used
dynamite to blast the salt free, but now they use electronic charges...safer, cheaper and more precise.

The mined areas
are separated by a 20x40 foot pillar of salt that's left for support. The floor is saltcrete, which has salt added instead of sand.

The dark lines are silt, and run
so level throughout this vein that the miners used them as a guide to cut a level ceiling.

When the miners finish an area,
they write their names and a message on the wall.

Moisture seeped through this area
and washed the silt and minerals downward; when the moisture was gone, the salt recrystalized and looked like this.

When I looked at the walls
was hard to remember that they weren't made of stone. This salt crystal looks like a rock, doesn't it?

This shows the size of this vein of salt.
It has been mined by up to 26 companies at one time, but now it's mined by three.

All 50 states plus these
countries have records stored in the underground vaults. A sign said if you're over 50 years old, there's at least one document down there with your name on it...probably on medical records.

Two of the costumes that are
stored in the underground vault. We are not in the UGV, this is in their museum, in the salt mine. The one on the left is Mr. Freeze, worn by Schwarzenegger in Batman and Robin (1997)

An ordinary looking warehouse,
and yet it's the loading docks for the Underground Vaults and Storage business. They employ 70 people!

This was a prop used in the
movie Frosty.

Comments

[Jill Miller]

My brother worked in this mine!
My younger brother Mark worked on the equipment used in this mine. For Christmas a few years back I bought him the "Dirty Jobs" video with Mike Rowe as memoire! I'm glad you got the tour....I'll have to check it out next time!!

[Danielson]

Hi, Jill!
How interesting! What was his job? We were surprised at how few workers it takes to get the salt mined. I saw that episode of Dirty Jobs, and they also show it at the visitor's center at the mine.

[Kaiden Paulette]

That would be cool
That would be cool to go down into a salt mine. It kind of looks like a volcano I once went into.

[Danielson]

Thank you!
Where was the volcano? I think that would be interesting!

[Baddboyfilms]

WOW
WoW this is cool

[Danielson]

Thank you!
It was cool in more ways than one!