We are spending a couple of days in Hutchinson, KS. We wanted to visit a salt mine and space museum here. Yesterday we checked out the salt mine....but not just a salt mine!
Part of the mine is a huge storage facility used to store everything from hospital records to movie memorabilia. It is as about as safe as you can get! 650 feet underground the temperature stays a constant 68 degrees:
In spite of the touristy looking building, it is an active salt mine. We were far from the active mining though but we could hear charges going off occasionally and that was interesting!
The map below shows the total 150 miles of tunnels that have been dug over the years with the blue section being the area we explored and the green is the storage facility:
The walls and ceiling sparkled with salt crystals and it is pretty! The salt in this mine is 96% pure.
this huge 6 ton salt block is unusual because it is so white and pure...it feels like glass
We took an electric train ride to explore some of the tunnels:
Passed some very old equipment along the way. Equipment today is very modern and robotic. Where it used to take a 40 man crew to drill and empty a section, it now takes only four. Less man power and a lot safer:
The white stick you see in the pic below measure how much the ceiling is sagging over time, yep, sometimes they fall!
Don't have to use toilets like the one below anymore;)
There is a museum at the entrance of the storage facility, which is, of course, off limits.
We stopped by the Dillon Nature Park and had a nice little walk around a pond and a lot of fun watching a goose family!
That salt mine tour looks interesting! So much cool stuff to see in our country!
ReplyDeleteThere sure is Lisa! Hopefully we will inspire a few others to get out and see it as well!
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