Strataca facts for kids
Main Entrance (2022)
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| Former name | Kansas Underground Salt Museum |
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| Established | May 1, 2007 |
| Location | 3650 East Avenue G, Hutchinson, KS 67501 USA |
| Type | Salt mine |
Strataca is a cool salt mine museum located in Hutchinson, Kansas, in the United States. It used to be called the Kansas Underground Salt Museum. This museum is built inside one of the biggest rock salt deposits in the world. This salt formed about 275 million years ago!
At Strataca, you get to go 650 feet (200 m) deep underground. That's like going down 65 stories! The museum is part of the Hutchinson Salt Company mine, which started working in 1923. There are 14 other salt mines in the U.S., but Strataca is the only one you can visit as a tourist.
Contents
Exploring the Salt Mine Museum
Strataca is a unique place where you can learn all about salt mining. It's an adventure deep beneath the Earth's surface.
What to Expect Underground
It takes only 90 seconds to travel 650 feet (200 m) down to the museum. Visitors ride in a special double-deck elevator. This elevator can hold 15 people on each level.
The conditions underground are always the same. The mine stays at a comfortable 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius). The air is also not too wet, with about 45% humidity. The rooms in the mine are huge! They can be from 2,500 to 15,000 square feet (1,400 m2) in size. The ceilings are also very tall, from 11 to 17 feet (5.2 m) high.
Since 1954, everyone going into the mine has needed to wear a hard hat and carry a rescue breather. But don't worry, no visitor or employee has ever needed to use the breather! The Mine Safety and Health Administration checks the mine regularly. They say the Hutchinson mine is one of the safest in the world.
The floor in much of the museum is made of a special material. It's like concrete, but it uses salt instead of sand. This material is called Saltcrete. It can release a fine salt dust for about a year until it fully hardens. Saltcrete can't be used where there's a lot of water because water makes it bubble and break apart.
How Salt Mining Works
The Hutchinson Salt Company mine is very large underground. It covers about 980 acres (4.0 km2). If you lined up all the dug-out areas, they would stretch for 150 miles (240 km)! Miners leave huge pillars of solid rock salt, 40 feet (12 m) square, to support the roof. These pillars keep each corridor or "room" safe.
Mining Salt with Room and Pillar Method
Since 1923, the Hutchinson Salt Company has used a method called room and pillar mining. First, a shaft (a deep hole) is dug down through the rock to reach the salt. Then, the salt is removed in a checkerboard pattern. This means large square caverns (empty spaces) are dug out. Square pillars of salt are left behind to hold up the rock above. This method also helps fresh air move through the mine for the workers.
Miners use blasting to break the salt into smaller pieces. These pieces are then moved to crushers. After crushing, the salt is taken to the surface using large buckets on a hoist. This mine elevator is called a "skip." When full, it carries four tons of salt. It goes up and down every three minutes. The skip also carries miners to and from the mine.
The rock salt mined here has some impurities like shale and anhydrite. Because of this, it's mostly used as road salt to melt ice. It's also used to feed livestock (farm animals).
Modern Mining Transportation
Museum visitors ride on electric trams for a part of the tour called The Dark Ride. Miners, though, have different ways to get around. They use vehicles that run on biodiesel, which is almost 100% cooking oil!
After the mine's train system stopped, miners started using old cars. At first, these cars were changed to run on regular diesel. But now, they use bio-diesel because it doesn't leave harmful particles in the air. The Hutchinson Salt Company mine was the first mine in North America to switch its underground vehicles to B100 fuel.
Museum Galleries and Exhibits
Strataca has several cool areas to explore, each showing a different part of the mine's story.
The Dark Ride Experience
The Dark Ride is an exciting tram tour. It takes visitors through a maze of tunnels beyond the main museum area. You'll see different parts of the mine environment. There's even a moment where you experience complete darkness! The tour also stops at a salt pile. Here, you can fill a small bag with salt crystals to take home as a souvenir.
Mantrip Gallery: Miner Transportation
"Mantrips" are like train cars that used to carry miners. In this gallery, you can see two of the mantrips that transported miners. The rail system was used until the 1980s. That's when miners started using vehicles changed to run on B100 bio-diesel. The vehicles used underground are often old scrap yard cars. They are taken apart to fit down the hoist, then put back together underground. Extra seats and rollbars are added for safety.
Mining Gallery: How Salt is Harvested
This gallery teaches you all about how salt is mined, both in the past and today. It has three main parts.
Undercut and Drill Area
Here, the mine is set up for the first step of a blast. An "undercutter" machine cuts a slot at the bottom of the salt wall. This makes it easier for the salt to break off. Then, many carefully placed holes are drilled into the salt wall.
Blast Area
The next part shows how the room being mined is wired with explosives. You can see a "powder car" on display. This car used to be a drill, but it was changed underground to carry all the tools and materials needed for a blast, including the explosives and wires.
Load Area
The third step in mining is loading the salt. Miners used a machine called the Joy Loader from the 1940s until 1983. This machine made work much faster because miners didn't have to load the salt by hand. This huge piece of equipment, like many others, was brought down the shaft in pieces. Then, it was welded back together underground. Once a piece of equipment is underground, it's usually left in an area that has already been mined.
You'll also see a "shuttle" in this gallery. It was used from the 1940s until 1983. It carried salt from where it was blasted to the main train line. This car ran on a DC extension cord. It saved a lot of work because miners no longer had to lay rails to get the salt from the blast site to the main rail lines.
Geology Gallery: Ancient Salt Secrets
In this gallery, you'll learn about the physical and geological features of the salt bed in Kansas. It focuses on the Permian Period, which was about 250 to 300 million years ago. You'll discover what animals lived during that time. You'll also learn why there are no fossils of these animals in the salt bed itself.
Throughout the mine, you might find tiny water bubbles trapped inside some of the salt. These are called fluid inclusions. Scientists believe these bubbles got trapped during the Permian Period.
The Fluid Inclusion Exhibit features something amazing: what some claim is the world's oldest living organism! It's thought to be about 250 million years old. This discovery of living bacteria found inside a salt crystal was made by Drs. Russell Vreeland, William Rosenzweig, and Dennis Powers. They believed the cells that formed these bacteria were alive even before the time of dinosaurs. (However, other scientists think the bacteria themselves might be younger, even if the salt crystal is very old.) These three scientists visited the museum for the exhibit opening. They even collected salt samples from the Hutchinson mine for more research.
Underground Vaults & Storage Gallery: Movie Treasures and More
The actual Underground Vaults & Storage (UV&S) facility is a secure area in another part of the mine. It's not open to the public. But the museum has a special gallery that looks just like it! UV&S is famous around the world for its super-safe storage. They store many important things, like the original camera negatives of famous movies such as Gone with the Wind and Ben Hur. They also keep master copies of TV shows.
UV&S also stores medical records, oil and gas charts, and many other valuable documents and items. These come from all 50 U.S. states and many other countries.
Underground Vaults and Storage and the Kansas Underground Salt Museum have borrowed some cool items and actual costumes from popular movies. This special exhibit includes famous items like Batman and Mr. Freeze costumes from Batman & Robin. You can also see James Dean’s shirt from Giant, the Snowman from the 1998 film Jack Frost, and Agent Smith’s costume from The Matrix.
Images for kids
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Tram Ride in the Great Hall
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A train that was used to transport salt, miners and supplies
See also
- List of museums in Kansas
- Cosmosphere, a space museum also in Hutchinson
