In Hard Rain, a group of strangers must band together to stop a ghostpocalypse from destroying the world. One of the locations in the story is an abandoned salt mine in Kansas. Yes, salt mining in Kansas is a real thing, and yes, I got to visit a mine.
The museum is called Strataca and is in Hutchison, Kansas. It is set up in an abandoned section of the mine 650 feet below the surface. I had to take a freight elevator down that reminded me way too much of Disney World’s Tower of Terror Ride.
The mine shafts are very wide and anywhere from six to twelve feet high. Temperature and humidity are constant. I forgot to note the numbers, but both are pleasant. Wear jeans. There are hundreds of acres of mine shafts down here, many still active.
The salt is all that remains of an evaporated ocean from hundreds of millions of years ago. The darker lines in the rock are impurities. The salt in this area is mined for deicing roads and other commercial uses, so those are not processed out as they are in table salt manufacture.
First discovered in the 1880s, the salt was originally blasted free and mined by hand. The displays have many example of the more recent machines used to excavate the salt.
Workers got around in trucks. These vehicles were bought used, stripped of unnecessary parts like doors and glass, disassembled, and brought down the small elevator. In the mine they were reassembled and fitted with electric motors. As you can see, everything rusts down here. At the end of the vehicle’s life, they were left in the mine because a trip up with trash is a money-losing trip up without salt, and there is plenty of extra room down here.
Bodily functions were considered another wasted trip topside. You don’t want to know the rest of the details associated with this display.
Mined salt was moved by electric railroad to the elevator. The engine ran off a live DC current wire in the low roof, like a streetcar. The white cars behind were loaded by hand with fractured salt chunks by “muckers” who got an extra 50 cents a day for their efforts. The red car at the end carried explosives. Now salt is moved with a massive conveyor belt.
Once the mines got too large, workers had their own train to get to work at the mine’s far end. Early mine tours used the same engine and cars.
The constant temperature and humidity make old mine areas perfect for storage. One company here does that in another unused section of the mine. Lots of Hollywood movies and props are stored here, like this Superman suit worn by Dean Cain and this Dorothy II prop from the movie Twister, because, after all, we are in Kansas.
This was fun two-hour tour that included a train and a tram tour of different parts of the mine. The price was excellent for the content and I would recommend it to anyone passing through the area. I went out of my way to see it after writing Hard Rain, and I am glad that I did.
Spoiler alert: Unlike in Hard Rain, this mine is ghost-free.
If this whetted your appetite for a salt mine ghostpocalypse, get yourself a copy of Hard Rain here on Amazon or wherever you buy your books.
