Old Mine Salts Away Nation’s Treasures

The original film negative for “The Wizard of Oz.” A collection of New York newspapers dating to the assassination of President Lincoln. Secret U.S. government documents. Thousands of medical research biopsies encased in wax.

All these--and so much more--are buried 645 feet beneath the Kansas prairie in a vast underground salt mine warehouse that teems with treasures and oddities from across the nation.

“It’s a kind of Noah’s Ark-- without the animals,” says Lee Spence, president of Underground Vaults & Storage Inc.

The Hutchinson company has built a thriving business in the mined-out sections of the salt mine. The caverns, accessible only by a rumbling mine elevator, are safely beyond the reach of tornadoes and far from any known earthquake fault. Temperature and humidity stay at near ideal conditions for preserving paper and film brought here from around the world.

These salt deposits--formed 230 million years ago as the inland sea that once covered Kansas evaporated--are now being wired with the latest technology to give companies around the world high-speed data access to records stashed within a prehistoric formation underneath Kansas wheat fields.

Wearing a hard hat and carting his requisite canister of oxygen, Spence steps onto the mine elevator--actually more of a hoist with an aboveground operator to run it--for the minute-long ride. He flips off his flashlight for a few seconds, and blackness engulfs the lurching contraption.

The flashlight back on, he aims the beam at a mass of wires running alongside the hoist, linking the world below to computer civilization above.

The elevator slows to a stop at the bottom, 60 stories down. The salt bed, discovered in 1889 during an oil-drilling project, is so large it can supply the nation’s salt needs for another 250,000 years.

A miner greets Spence with a common query: “How’s the weather up there?” Below, year-round, the temperature hovers around 65 degrees, and the humidity is between 40 and 45%.

Spence quickly reaches a doorway below the sign for Underground Vaults and steps inside. Under a 99-year renewable lease, the warehouse has rented space here since 1959. Its strategy was sparked by a corporate director, a World War II veteran who remembered that Adolf Hitler preserved items underground.

The low salt ceiling and antique mining equipment open up to 10-foot ceilings and a friendly receptionist answering the phones. Cement floors are level, and white paint on rough rock walls keeps down dust.

The Hutchinson Salt Co. continues its mining operations just 1 1/2 miles away. Storage vaults fill only a few of its abandoned caverns, some 12 acres of the company’s available 800 acres. Another 26 acres are under development now.

Among 1,600 clients are California movie companies that find the Kansas salt mines ideal for storing original negatives and outtakes.

Salt bays reveal familiar titles: “Gone With the Wind,” “Ben Hur,” “Star Wars.” TV episodes of “M*A*S*H” reside near silent movies. And then there’s the appropriately located “Journey to the Center of the Earth.”

In the last two months alone, 20th Century Fox delivered 22 truckloads of film. “It is so cheap to store down here--a lot cheaper than California,” Spence says.

Below Kansas costs companies $3 a square foot. In places like California, it costs companies up to $30 per square foot to construct buildings and provide security, heating and air-conditioning.

Kansas is also favored by oil and gas companies that need to stash seismic data and leases. Insurance companies keep original policies here. Government offices store property records and parking tickets, among a slew of other documents. Architects stow blueprints.

A California company stores old stock certificates in wooden fruit crates. Hospitals and doctors file medical records, and accountants store tax records. Even the federal government has a locked salt bay for secret paperwork.

The salt warehouse also caters to individuals, who may pay as little as $130 a year. A couple of wedding dresses have been passed from generation to generation to mine. Collections include coins, and newspapers dating to the early 1800s.

About 65 warehouse employees work in two shifts, finding records, bringing more boxes and computerizing contents. Shirley Byard has worked underground for 14 years, keeping the kitchen done up, as she puts it.

It takes some getting used to: After a day’s work, employees can taste the salt on their skin.