"It’s
going to take us just a couple of minutes to go
underground. Does anybody have a problem going down in the
dark?" our cheerful guide asked.
"Yes!"
I screamed in my head. But I said nothing because none of
my fellow tourists did — six senior citizens, including
a woman pushing a walker.
"No?
OK," the guide said. "We do that because it
gives you the first experience of going into the mine.
Miners go down ... in the dark, so we try to do the same
as well, kind of get you prepared for being in the mine.
"It
will be completely dark," she continued, "what
we call pure mine darkness, and you won’t be able to see
a thing. Your ears might feel some pressure, kind of like
when you’re flying, so if you swallow, that will pop
your ears."
As
we descended, cool mine air blasted up my leg through an
air hole in the floor, reminding me the whole way down of
the depths I had to go for this story.
Down,
down, metal clanking; down, down, gears groaning, the
elevator squeezed its way through the shaft.
Did
I mention we were all wearing hard hats? And emergency
breathing apparatus around our necks?
Did
I mention I’m a wee bit claustrophobic?
I
silently cursed the editor who sent me here.
"The
bumpings and scrapings and all that, that is normal,"
the guide said, voice raised above the clatter.
"There are sensors on the sides of the hoist and, um,
just a little bit of salt dust. I like to say that you’d
probably hear the same sounds in an elevator, but you’re
in an insulated compartment in an elevator."
She
kept up a cheerful patter during the 90-second ride. This
tidbit caught my ear: There are only three ways in and out
of the mine. We were standing in one of them.
A
loud beep-beep-beep saved me from mental hyperventilation.
"That sound means we’re 50 feet from the bottom
already," the guide said.
And
just like that, we were there. Our guide pulled the heavy
metal doors of the hoist open, and we stepped out into a
lighted lobby.
"Good
morning! My name is Patty," said the perky,
white-haired woman waiting for us. "Welcome to the
Kansas Underground Salt Museum. You are now 650 feet below
the surface of the Earth."
Six
hundred and fifty feet.
We
had just traveled a distance roughly the height of the
Gateway Arch in St. Louis.
More
than 400,000 visitors have made this trip since May 2007,
when the museum opened in mined-out caverns of the
920-acre Hutchinson Salt Co. Shortly thereafter the museum
was named one of the eight wonders of Kansas, along with
the nearby Kansas Cosmosphere.
Perky
Patty informed us that the ground we stood on was covered
275 million years ago by the Permian Sea. The sea left
behind a giant swath of salt — 30 trillion tons —
stretching from an area northeast of Kansas City through
Kansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico.
"We
have been asked if we are going to run out of salt here.
They predict that 2,500 years from now, this salt strata
will be exhausted," Patty said.
"Just
to be safe," she said with a laugh, "I’m
stocking up at home."
Salt
has been mined continuously in this spot since 1923, when
the Carey Salt Co. (today it is Hutchinson Salt) set up
operations in one of the biggest deposits of rock salt in
the world. Salt is still mined here on the same level as
the museum for use in animal feed, tanning hides and
de-icing roads.
The
museum floors are made with salt, too, Patty said, which
is why drinks are not allowed in the mine. Don’t want to
melt those floors.
The
lobby opened onto a cavernous space lit from overhead —
a so-called "great room."
"This
is how they mined back in the ‘20s and ‘30s, in large,
dead-end rooms that were 300 feet long and 50 feet
wide," she said.
A
6,000-pound hunk of whitish-gray crystallized salt sat in
the middle of the space.
The
story is told that a former mine manager figured that one
day someone would need that giant rock for posterity, so
he had his men save it. Otherwise, it could have wound up
on the streets of Chicago, the No. 1 customer for the road
salt mined here.
The
museum tells the story of salt mining in Hutchinson.
Videos and exhibits show how the salt is extracted,
crushed and moved to the hoist that carries it to the
surface. The process was backbreaking, pick-and-shovel
type of labor until the mine lost workers to World War II
and began to mechanize the process.
Before
the conveyor belts used today, the salt was hauled through
the mine on train cars. Almost 5,000 feet of that track
was dug up, cut up, bent and built into a railroad that
carries visitors into dark corners of the mine.
Before
we boarded the open-air train cars, the conductor of the
Salt Mine Express told us the rules: Keep body limbs
inside the car at all times, and do not raise your hands
above your hard hat.
"There
are places out there where you can actually touch the
ceiling, you can actually touch the walls," Mr.
Engineer said. "But we don’t want you to do that
because the salt can be sharp, it can cut. And salt in a
wound does not feel very good."
He
clanged the train’s bell as we rolled off into the dark.
Spotlights activated by motion sensors lit up displays
along the way. Our first stop was in front of a bulkhead,
a wall built by miners to direct air flow.
"There’s
actually over 150 miles of tunnels down here, so it was
important for the miners to keep the air where they were
working instead of letting it go out into parts of the
mine where they were finished," a recorded narration
said.
In
front of the wall, on a table, lay a pair of work gloves
from the 1940s.
"When
this area was being mined, everyone conserved materials
for the war effort," the narrator said. "The
miners wore the glove on their right hand and used the
right glove until they wore out the palm. And then they
would wear it on their left hand until they wore out the
back of their glove."
The
train moved on to a place where huge, dangerously jagged
chunks of earth and rock littered the mine floor.
"As
you look to the left," the narrator prompted,
"you’ll see a rare sight, what the miners call a
roof fall. The pieces on the floor used to be the roof.
But over a number of years, the salt started sagging away
from the compacted mud layer above it and eventually fell.
"Even
though only a few roofs ever develop a roof sag,
everywhere in the mine that people will walk, drive or
ride, we monitor the roof, and sags are removed when
necessary.
"In
the far corner, you can still see a roof sag. Can you
imagine how it sounded when this roof fell?"
In
the train’s headlights I could see that we were heading
into a narrow tunnel with a very, very, very, very, very,
very low ceiling.
Did
I mention I’m just a wee bit claustrophobic?
I
closed my eyes, like I do on roller coasters.
The
train stopped on the other side at an exhibit of, well,
trash. "Everything that comes down in the mine stays
in the mine," the narrator said. "If you look at
the lit area, you’ll see that this is even true of
mining trash."
Hershey
bar wrappers, Coke bottles, Campbell’s soup cans, a 1953
calendar. The trash was artfully arranged next to a crude
miner’s toilet, little more than a wooden box with a
toilet seat on top. Scraps of toilet paper (clean, it was
clean) littered the ground around it.
"In
case you were wondering, trash isn’t the only thing
miners left underground," said the narrator.
"Apparently this area was used as a restroom. No
fancy portapots here, and they weren’t very careful with
the toilet paper, either.
"This
is one reason we say: Don’t lick the salt!"
Scout
troops regularly camp overnight in the museum, almost
every Saturday during winter, and take guided walks out
into the scary darkness of the mine.
I’m
neither young nor brave. But for research purposes only I
took the museum’s ominously titled "Dark
Ride." Perky Patty, again, was our guide. As she
drove the tram away from the gift shop a co-worker yelled
out: "Bring them all back this time!"
Up
ahead, in a room mined of its salt during the ‘40s and
‘50s, she slowed the tram and announced: "I am
going to stop and turn the lights off just for a moment,
just to give you another experience with mine darkness. On
the count of three I’m going to turn the lights off.
"One.
Two. Three."
She
flipped off the headlights.
The
darkness swallowed us alive.
Someone
whispered, "Oh. My. Gawd."
(It
was me.)
"Now
everyone put your hand up in front of your face. If you
can see your hand, please raise your hand and let me
know," she said.
"Once
in a while I actually have people wave their hand. My
contention is either their brain is playing tricks on them
or they came here directly from Smallville."
"Do
you ever get lost down here?" one man asked as Patty
turned on the headlights and drove on.
"I
never have," she said. "I’ve heard that most
people have turned wrong at least once. So far, I haven’t."
"Glad
to hear that," the man said.
"I
thought you would be," Patty said.
She
pulled the tram next to a pile of rock salt and invited us
to take a piece home. Just don’t climb on the pile, she
warned. "Find yourself a souvenir that’s millions
of years old!"
From
the get-go, you know that this adventure through the
bowels of the Earth is no trip to Disney World. You can’t
even go underground without first watching a safety film
explaining the three-pound "self-rescuer" you
have to wear at all times, like the miners.
"It
changes carbon monoxide, which is a byproduct of fire,
into harmless carbon dioxide," the film narrator
explains. "The mouthpiece will get hot, maybe even
hot enough to burn your lips and mouth. Don’t spit it
out! This means the chemical reaction is working.
"Now
that you’re wondering what you’ve gotten yourself
into, we want you to know that the salt will not burn, and
there are no (harmful) gases in this mine, as a coal mine
has. No one has ever had to use the self-rescuer in this
mine."
Right
about then is when I started wondering who wanted to put a
tourist attraction next to purgatory.
Turns
out his name is Jay Smith, and he lives in South Dakota.
But in December 1995 he moved to Hutchinson to be
executive director of the Reno County Historical Society.
One
of the first places he visited was a historical placard
marking the spot where salt was first discovered in this
city. The marker was overgrown with weeds "and kind
of forgotten," Smith recalled.
He’d
noticed lots of places around town named Salt City this
and Salt City that. But at the historical museum
"there wasn’t really a lot about salt on display.
Here was this town’s namesake, and it wasn’t being
fully discussed," said Smith, now the state museum
director for the South Dakota State Historical Society.
One
day he chanced to visit Underground Vaults & Storage,
a business that leases space in the mine from Hutchinson
Salt Co. (Underground Vaults also runs an underground
storage complex in Kansas City.)
"It
looked like you were going to a new world," Smith
said. "I’d been in coal mines and gold mines
before, so I was happy to see wide open spaces because it
made you feel comfortable."
That’s
when the idea hit: Why not put a museum down there?
Talking
to people around town he found that there’d been similar
talk back in the ‘50s, when Carey Salt gave public tours
of its working mine. In 1952, almost 9,000 people visited.
The
tours eventually got in the way of the mining. Because the
salt and tourists traveled up and down the same hoist, the
salt couldn’t move when there were visitors in it. In
the late ‘60s, new mining safety regulations ended the
tours.
People
told Smith that the museum couldn’t be built. He knew he’d
need the blessing of the two companies already doing
business in the mine.
In
June 1999 he sat down with folks from the salt company and
Underground Vaults. They too tried to talk him out of the
idea "about a million different ways," he said.
But
they promised: If you can get federal safety authorities
to approve it, we’ll help.
Thus
began "one of the most unique partnerships you’ll
find in the United States, between a small historical
society, an underground storage company and a working salt
company," Smith said. "I mean, where do you see
that?"
The
project lurched forward in fits and starts. Fundraising
screeched to a halt after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
Building a new, $6 million shaft and hoist — the one now
used by the museum and Underground Vaults — had to wait
until 2004, and only then could construction on the museum
itself begin.
"Nobody
had any idea how difficult it was going to be because it’s
just a completely alien kind of environment down
there," said Linda Schmidt, the current director of
the Reno County Historical Society.
"First
of all, you have the salt, which corrodes aluminum, which
corrodes metal. Then it’s so hard, even though it flakes
off on the outside, you can’t nail anything into it. So
we had to ramset everything in.
"Here’s
another thing: It’s always moving down there. So we can’t
build any wall up to the ceiling because the ceiling is
always pushing down, and the floors are always heaving up.
"No
one who worked on the project had ever worked in that kind
of environment before. Nobody knew how to do that, so that
just led to all kinds of challenges and setbacks."
For
instance: How to move waste from the restrooms to the
surface? (Lots of pumps and back-up systems do the dirty
work.)
And
how to keep visitors from veering into unsafe areas or
getting lost? (Walls were built to discourage wandering.)
I
didn’t wander off any beaten path, but I did lose myself
in contemplation over Batman.
Standing
in front of the costume George Clooney wore as the Caped
Crusader in the 1997 movie "Batman & Robin,"
I marveled at the six-pack abs sculpted into the rubber
suit. It even had nipples. And the Bat boots?
My,
my, George has small feet.
Next
I stood in awe in front of the Mr. Freeze costume, a
silvery monstrosity worn by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the
same movie.
My,
my, Arnold has an enormous, uh, codpiece.
Yes,
this is still a story about the salt museum. And yes,
there are Hollywood costumes displayed here. They’re
kind of a tease, a glimpse of the countless Hollywood
treasures stored not far away in Underground Vaults, with
50 acres that are off-limits to the general public, a real
bummer for Hollywood buffs like me.
Company
president Lee Spence once called the storage company
"a kind of Noah’s Ark, without the animals."
Sony
Pictures, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. all hide
things at Underground Vaults. It’s a veritable Fort Knox
safe from tornadoes, floods, earthquakes and all manner of
mischief and mayhem, where the 68-degree temperature and
45-percent humidity are ideal for preserving paper and
film.
Turns
out those are comfortable working conditions, too, for
anyone who’s not weirded out by spending hours
underground. Employees wear shorts at work on even the
coldest days of winter.
The
company stores millions of boxes full of paper and data
— oil and gas company leases and maps, insurance
policies, architectural blueprints, medical files, tax
records, historic New York newspapers reporting Abraham
Lincoln’s assassination.
Secret
government documents are locked up here. (The truth about
Area 51, perhaps?) Everything is electronically catalogued
and bar-coded so it can be easily found.
"What
people need to realize is our clients trust us to secure
their information. They trust us to make sure that we’re
not a tourist facility," company vice president Jeff
Ollenburger said.
"Where
there are occasions where we might bring people through
for an official tour, it’s very rare that we do that.
That’s one of the reasons we support the museum, and we’ve
tried to create a small exhibit over there about what we
do."
The
Underground Vaults folks are loathe to reveal specifics
about their clients. But over the years they have shared
that they are the keepers of such historic movies as
"Ben-Hur" and "Star Wars," old silent
movies, every episode of "M*A*S*H" and the
original film negative of "The Wizard of Oz."
Harry
Potter and Scooby-Doo live here, too.
Hollywood
has been stashing its stuff here for more than 30 years.
The inventory morphed as the technology did, from
old-fashioned film reels to digital tapes and DVDs.
"The
film industry, they just don’t throw anything
away," Ollenburger said. "So all the outtakes
and trims and all these things that never see the light of
day in the finished product are kept, and they get sent to
us in boxes because they never know when they might use
them again.
"They
keep pretty good records of what they’ve shot, what got
used and what didn’t get used. So a lot of times they’ll
use a scene that’s already been shot for one film —
they might put it in another.
"I’m
always amazed when they pull some really old piece and
find those never-before-seen elements and put it into a
DVD extras package because I know where it’s been. It’s
been underground and we’ve kept it safe."
I
tried to weasel more intel out of Ollenburger, who was
kind enough to give me a rare look at the place. But the
man is a human vault. It might have something to do with
the confidentiality agreement employees must sign.
"Do
you have any copies of ‘The Wizard of Oz?’" I
asked, flashing what I thought was my most winning smile.
"I
don’t have any on me," he replied, grinning.
Knowing
that I was most interested in the Hollywood stash, we
headed for one particular storage bay. The
15,000-square-foot room filled with boxes neatly arranged
on floor-to-ceiling shelves reminded me of the last scene
of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," where the ark is
crated and stashed in a government warehouse.
Could
that ark be here, I wondered?
We
walked down the room’s center aisle and I girl-squealed
as we passed boxes marked with one memorable movie title
after another. At the end of one row sat a box that made
my knees go weak as I read its label. I reached out and
touched it.
I’m
not supposed to reveal what was inside that box.
But
frankly my dear, I don’t give a …
At
the end of my visit I dreaded what lay ahead: a ride back
to the surface in that noisy hoist.
In
the gift shop I found someone who felt my pain: Sandy
Beltz, a visitor from northeast Nebraska. She and her
husband like to check out "weird and different
places" on vacation, and an Internet search led them
to the salt mine museum.
She’d
been concerned that her claustrophobia would kick in
underground, but "it wasn’t what I thought,"
she said. "The ceilings are high, and it’s very
open."
For
the ride down, which she compared to being stuffed into an
MRI machine, her husband stood close to her side after she
"took a Tylenol," she stage-whispered to me.
She
was checking out the salt-themed souvenirs: lamps made of
salt, shot glasses, plastic miner’s helmets and, of
course, salt shakers.
She
settled on a T-shirt that I was tempted to buy for the
editor who sent me to do this story.
It
read: "I Survived the Shaft."
———
IF
YOU GO:
KANSAS
UNDERGROUND SALT MUSEUM
Where:
3504 E. Avenue G, Hutchinson, Kan.
Winter
hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1-5 p.m.
Sunday. Closed Monday. Allow at least two hours for your
visit. Last tour each day departs two hours before
closing.
Admission:
$14 adults; $12 seniors, AAA members and active military;
$9 Reno County residents; $7.50 children ages 4-12. Dark
Ride and tram ride cost extra.
Visitors:
Between 55,000 and 60,000 a year. July is the busiest
month.
Party
underground: The museum has an event space for public and
private functions where food and drink are allowed, unlike
in other parts of the museum.
Info:
undergroundmuseum.org, 620-662-1425, 866-755-3450
