Salt Mine

One of the more memorable stops on my recent trip through the Midwest was the Strataca Salt Mine Museum in Hutchinson Kansas. After donning hard hats and receiving a “self-breather” apparatus in case of fire(!), about a dozen of us brave souls went down a 400 foot deep mine shaft in a steel cage. When we reached the bottom, we emerged into a strange wonderland of a cave. The areas where the salt had been mined were large, square rooms, about 100 feet in each dimension, with level floors and a high ceiling. The walls still had veins of salt in them, giving the "rooms" a mysterious air. There was a lot of old mine equipment around as well:



There was even a 50 year old trash heap with all the litter in a state of perfect preservation:



With over a hundred miles of empty space, there is no incentive to bring any of the trash up to the surface. Some of the mined-out areas are used for archive and document storage. The constant temperature and humidity of the mines preserves data, costumes, movies and the like:



Being hundreds of feet below ground with limited access adds a dimension of security to the storage. There was a short video shown with interviews of some of the miners. For the most part they liked their jobs, especially in the summer when it was 100° up top and 65° down below. In the winter, it was harder, they missed seeing the sun when their shift was over.