It is museum review time again. In this post, I’ll write about a museum that is
probably well out of the way for the majority of you, but well worth your time
and money if you have the opportunity to make it: Strataca - a museum and tour
of an active salt mine 650 feet (~200m) below the ground in Hutchinson, Kansas,
USA. The museum provides an overview of the salt mine operations, the geology
of the mine itself, and a history of the people and equipment used in the mine.
I’ll describe the museum here and explain why I give it two salty thumbs up.
The mine covers nearly 1000 acres of excavated salt deposits and is still an
active mine. Only a tiny fraction of that is open to visitors, however.
Commercial operations began in 1923 when the Carey Salt Company started up.
The main commercial operation is now known as the Hutchinson Salt Company, and
is supposedly the only place in the United States where you can tour an active
salt mine.
The museum begins in a building above ground that serves as both the ticket
booth and a photo and diorama display covering various salt mine topics.
Visitors are issued a hardhat, given a quick overview movie, and ushered into a
double-decker elevator that takes around 90 seconds to descend into the mine.
When descending into the mine, the elevator passes through the Oglalla Aquifer,
one of the worlds largest aquifers. It is a pretty interesting bit of
engineering to gain access to the salt layer without draining the above aquifer
into it. The elevator then passes into the salt formation itself, a layer
dating to the Permian period, somewhere around 250 million years ago. At this
point in history, this section of North America was submerged in an ocean.
(You may recall from your paleontology books that the Permian period ended with
the greatest extinction event known -- up to 95% of marine species and 70% of
land animals went extinct. But alas, there are no fossils in the mine.)
Once exiting the elevator, the museum proper begins by allowing visitors to
walk freely around a large loop with displays, signage and artifacts from the
mine's history. In this walking tour portion of the museum, you see and can
touch old equipment like train engines and cars, augur bits, different types of
rock salt and other rocks found in the mine, and a lot more. This section also
has videos and displays explaining how the mine operates, from blasting to
filling transport cars to the planning of the mine structure itself. You can
easily spend an hour or two in this part of the museum.
The second section of the museum takes visitors on two different motorized
tours of the mine. One is on a train and focuses more on the history of the
mine and the other, a longer trip, on a tram focuses more on the current
structure and operations. At the end of the tram tour, visitors get to dig
through a big pile of rubble to take a "fist sized" souvenier salt rock.
For locals, there are a few additional attractions in the mine. Once a year
people have an opportunity to do a bicycle tour though the mine. I'm not sure
if this targets the famous local gravel road racing community, but it sounds
like a lot of fun. And at another time, people can sign up to run a 5k race in
the mine. And, the mine even supports activities for Scouts -- they can do an
overnight trip into the mine and earn both a geology and mining merit badge.
Two of my kids are in Scouts, but our visit to the area unfortunately didn't
overlap with one of these overnight opportunities.
The explanatory exhibits in the mine are well done and overall the museum is
very interesting. I will definitely go again if I'm ever in the Hutchinson,
Kansas, and I highly recommend this unique museum to others.
