Underground Salt Mine!

Every wonder what it's like 650 feet below ground in a functioning Salt Mine? Well here's your chance! Warring, this is image heavy :)





This adventure starts off in the most unlikeliest places, the Kansas prairie just outside Hutchinson Kansas. The Hutchinson Salt was deposited some 230 million years ago and the mine first opened in 1923. It's the only Salt mine in the United States that allows tourist/visitors.





Just above the mine is the Strataca mine museum and where you buy your tickets which runs $19 USD for adults. Once you have your tickets, you take a 1.5 minute elevator ride down 650 feet. The elevator is double stacked and completely dark. Once a row is filled in the elevator, it rises up allowing access to the next row. Once full, it takes you to the bottom floor/main room.





There is several available tours, this one consist of electric golf carts touring some of the mine shafts. I wasn't aware at the time but their is also a train as well.





The mine is roughly 980 acres and if line up in order, this would stretch 150 miles! s the miners mined the salt, they would leave behind 40 sq ft pillars that formed support for the runners or rooms.





Miners would sometimes block off rooms or tunnels to re-direct air. Speaking of air, the mine is devoid of air. This means there is no natural air or oxygen in the tunnel. This has to be pumped into the mine from above.





This was less than reassuring lol. There is some parts of the mine where the pillars would sink! So they would stack up railroad ties for support. It was about time for me to leave after seeing that lol





Old mining cars. This is a display of an explosive car...real authentic car but display explosive boxes. Yes, they used explosives to help dig the mine.





Electric car anyone? What goes into a mine, stays in the mine. They disassemble vehicles and take them pieces at a time down the elevator shafts. Once down there, they reassemble them and that is where they stay. It just isn't practical to tie up the elevators removing old gear. This vehicle is a very early 1920's Ford truck that was fitted with an electrical motor. If you look closely, you can see the electrical power cord for it.


Story goes, miners would see how far they could get the truck to coast after coming unplugged. They did this by simply going as fast as they could and when the cord ran out of slack, it would pull the cord loose from the electrical socket. Then they would mark where it would stop. Interestingly enough, they had to manually push the truck back due to a lack of plugs lol

Electric Rail motor car

Due to the low temperatures and perfect humidity, the mine is used to store important documents. This are is called the vault and is off limits to tourist. All 50 states as well as various other countries contract with the Hutchinson's mine to store their items. This also includes Hollywood. Inside this mine holds the original film reals for movies such as Star Wars and Gone with the Wind! Since this area is strictly off limits, the museum has re-reated a small version of the vault for tourist to get an up close idea of how things are stored.





This is an old U.S. Government Data collecting computer....your phone has more memory and processing power than this large device.

Hollywood?

Hollywood was cool enough to put out a few displays for us. This is the Superman costume Dean Cain wore in: Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993-1997)





The Batman costume George Clooney in: Batman and Robin movie (1997).





Costume Arnold Schwarzenegger wore playing Mr. Freeze in Batman and Robin (1997).