Strataca: Touring an Underground Salt Mine in Hutchinson, Kansas

As we descended into the mine, we were plunged into total darkness. Underground miners would turn off their lights to prevent methane explosions and even thought the present-day miners don’t use open flames the tradition continues. It didn’t take long to reach the bottom, even though it was six hundred and eighty feet underground.

The last time we visited Bob and Nancy, Bob told us about the underground mine tour. That visit we didn’t have time but now we were stranded in Kansas as Hurricane Rosa’s remnants, high wind and heavy rains, kept us from traveling further south.

I was a bit apprehensive about going underground but as soon as the elevator gate opened I beheld mine faces glittering with crystal halite, (salt). Unlike the salt domes in Louisiana the mine here works in the Hutchinson Formation, which is a Permian formation about two hundred and seventy million years old. It represents the drying out of an ancient inland sea and took about one point six million years to form.

Most of the mine tour was self-guided, with great displays telling the history of the mine and the methods used to extract the salt. The salt here is primarily used for highways, however there are voids filled with extremely pure sodium chloride.

Renita worked for a coal mine and understood the kerf and the method of bringing the wall apart as it’s the same method used in underground coal mines. She posed with a pickaxe and it fit her nicely, even though it’s a little larger than the one I bought her for her birthday, (she uses it while rockhounding).

What went down the mine, tools, trucks, railroad cars, etc. stayed inside the mine and so many of the displays were of old discarded equipment.  The tour through the displays usually takes about an hour but Renita and I were so engrossed that we were the last ones to finish. They even had to send a rider to look for us, worried that we had wandered off…..

The rider told us that the last train ride was about to begin and so we hurried to the train loading area. The conductor told us to keep our arms inside the car and to keep our heads down as the ride passed through areas where the mine height barely allowed us to pass through.

One of the first stops was where the mine roof had fallen/collapsed. The roof of the mine sags, and you could see the sag in many areas. The conductor explained that the floor also heaves up as the mine is trying to seal itself due to the tremendous pressure, (the salt is under so much pressure that it behaves as a plastic material and even though solid, flows).

The roof was kept from collapsing due to forty-foot pillars and the occasional wooden cribbing. Ventilation was provided by huge fans blowing air from the surface through the shafts, over one hundred and fifty miles, and dynamite boxes filled with salt that sealed unused passages.

The train ride ended at the gift shop, surprise, and they had some boxes full of rocks!  What a great gift shop!  I had to be dragged away form the rocks, I did purchase some, as the last dark ride was loading. On this ride a guide drives you through other areas of the mine and turns the light off, to envelop you in total darkness.

Returning to the main tour area we stopped and walked past displays of movies and movie artifacts. The superman costume was one   worn by the tv superman in the nineteen sixties. Although active mining still is taking place old areas have been turned into storage archives.

The tour ended, and we loaded back into the elevators. We were the last ones to reach the surface and it was only fitting that we ascended in total darkness. The mine tour is not a place for anyone who suffers from claustrophobia, but we enjoyed the tour immensely! Clear skies