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Museum Truly is Worth Its Salt

Posted on: Saturday, 11 February 2006, 15:00 CST

By Kevin Murphy, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

Feb. 11--HUTCHINSON, Kan. -- Sixty stories beneath Kansas pastures, Gene Kelly is "Singin' in the Rain," Charlie Chaplin is the clown prince of silent movies, and Johnny Carson still is "The Tonight Show" host.

This may be as close to a time capsule as you can get -- a vast working salt mine whose caverns also preserve what is likely the world's largest collection of original movies and television shows, along with millions of business and government documents.

If the Smithsonian Institution is the nation's attic, this could pass as its basement -- and Hutchinson is betting that the mine will be a tourist draw for its lore, its history and for its geology that dates back 230 million years.

Proponents have raised $5.5 million for the Underground Salt Museum, which they hope to open this summer if the city of Hutchinson and state of Kansas approve special bonds to raise an additional $4.8 million. City and museum officials are optimistic.

"It will be the only museum of its kind in the Western Hemisphere," said Neil Johnson, interim director of the museum.

Underground exhibits would tell how rock salt is mined and how the vacated mines have records from around the world. A small theater would show reproduced clips of films in storage.

When the mines were last open for public tours in the 1960s, "it was a very popular thing," Johnson said. The small 1932 locomotive that pulled visitors through the mines would be in the museum -- along with other antique vehicles and carts dating to the opening of the mine in 1923.

"Everything that ever went down in the mine is still there," Johnson said. "Usually, when you start a museum, you have to collect artifacts, but ours are already there."

Visitors reach the mine on a cagelike elevator that descends 650 feet in 70 seconds. The steel, two-level hoist slowly clanks through darkness and at the bottom opens to a seemingly endless series of silent, salt-walled corridors a quarter mile long and 50 feet wide.

The temperature is always the same in the mine -- 68 degrees -- and the humidity always ranges from 45 percent to 50 percent, perfect for long-term preservation of film and records. The elevator shaft is the mine's lifeline, channeling air vents, water lines and electrical wires to work spaces below.

Preserving the hits

While adjacent mines still produce 300,000 tons of rock salt per year -- used mostly for melting ice on roads -- the mined-out areas have become well known for their use as storage.

Underground Vaults and Storage Inc. has operated at the mine since 1959. The mined-out areas sprawl across 940 acres, but only about 40 acres are needed for storage, even though business is booming, said Lee Spence, company president.

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks heightened interest in securing records, Spence said. The depth of the Hutchinson mine and elevator-only access were appealing, and company revenue has grown from $8 million in 2000 to about $15 million today, he said.

The company's biggest client is the film industry. Movie titles can be seen on boxes that line shelves 11 feet high in the mined-out caverns. Most of the major studios store movies in the mines, along with reels and reels of film that never made the final cut, Spence said.

"Anything that happened on the production floor at the movie house we have," he said.

In all, the mine stores about 300,000 boxes of films that each contain 10-12 reels. Most of the best-known movies of all-time -- such as "Gone with the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz" are stored in the mine, along with classic television shows such as "MASH,""I Love Lucy" and "The Andy Griffith Show." Just about every game show and soap opera one can imagine also is stored, along with long-ago cartoons such as "Tom & Jerry."

Every day, about 60 employees work in the storage areas, but they are not allowed to slip a film off the shelf for private viewing, said Chris Eden, marketing director of Underground Vaults.

"We wouldn't have the equipment to watch it," he quipped.

Film studios, however, frequently request clips. Last year after Johnny Carson died, some of the 5,000 shows stored in the mine were resurrected to use in a tribute to Carson on the "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno, Spence said.

Most of the materials stored in the mine are not as glamorous but are critical to clients. For instance, major oil and gas companies store seismic data, medical researchers store wax-encased biopsies, and there are thousands of stock certificates dating back to the 1920s.

The mines have government and business records from 23 countries, Spence said. The company and other underground storage firms also store records in the Kansas City area, but the Hutchinson site is unique for its depth, limited access and relatively low cost, he said.

Among clients for the Hutchinson site is the Federal Reserve, which stores electronic records that would help keep the banking system going in the event of an attack or other catastrophe. The reserve even stores dried food to sustain employees who would have to work in the mine.

Visitors to the Underground Salt Museum would not be allowed to tour the actual storage areas.

Improved access

Johnson said that a museum had been proposed for years, but that the biggest issue was access to the mines. There was only one elevator, shared by miners and Underground Vaults employees.

But at a cost of $6 million, paid partly by the museum but mostly by Underground Vaults, a new elevator was finished in December that carries up to 30 persons. Drilling the shaft required penetrating a 120-foot-thick aquifer that had to first be frozen, a process that took a month.

The museum soon will begin setting up exhibits in the mines and plans to build a visitors center at the mine entrance.

The museum board is seeking Hutchinson City Council and state approval for $4.8 million in STAR bonds, similar to those issued for the NASCAR track in Wyandotte County. They would be paid off from existing annual sales taxes of about $140,000 from the city and $735,000 from the state.

City Manager John Deardoff said the council generally supports the bonds. The taxes involved account for only about 1.2 percent of all sales tax collections, he said.

The secretary of the Kansas Department of Commerce also must approve. Department spokesman Caleb Asher said the proposal has not yet received formal review, but Johnson said he has a letter from the secretary saying he was inclined to support the project.

Although museum organizers forecast 100,000 visitors annually, there is some concern that the city may have to subsidize museum operations, just as it does for the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, Deardoff said.

Johnson said "we can't guarantee" subsidies won't be needed, but he believes the Cosmosphere and salt museum would be a strong, if contrasting, pair of tourist draws for Hutchinson.

"You could go from 650 feet under ground to the stars in one day," Johnson said.

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To reach Kevin Murphy, call (816) 234-4464 or send e-mail to kmurphy@kcstar.com.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

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Source: The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri)

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