Strataca

Under Hutchinson lies a bed of rock salt laid down about 275 million years ago, in the Permian Period. The Carey Salt Company began mining it in 1923, and its successor, the Hutchinson Salt Company, still does, by the room and pillar method: blasting out square rooms and leaving pillars of salt 40 feet square to hold up the rock above. The checkerboard now covers about 980 acres, and laid end to end the rooms would run about 150 miles. Most of this rock salt goes onto winter roads and to livestock.

For decades the only way down was the mine's single shaft, and it carried no more than ten people at a time. To build a museum, the Reno County Historical Society and Underground Vaults & Storage, which keeps film, records and other materials in a separate part of the mine, shared the cost of a new shaft. It had to pass through the water-bearing Equus Beds, so in 2004 contractors froze the ground by pumping brine and liquid nitrogen through 24 pipes, then blasted down and lined the shaft in concrete as they went. The museum opened in 2007 and took the name Strataca in 2013.

A double-deck elevator now makes the 650-foot descent in about 90 seconds. Below, the air holds near 68 degrees all year. Visitors walk galleries of mining machinery that was brought down in pieces and welded back together underground, ride a 30-minute tram through dark worked-out chambers,. A longer guided tour goes on into the working mine.