There Is A City 1200 Feet Below Detroit That Barely Anyone Knows About
Detroit took the economic downturn particularly hard. With crime levels skyrocketing and the economy crashing, I can see why Eminem rapped with such angst in his youth.
The city’s plight has been well documented in recent years, but a random series of Wikipedia clicks led me to a little known fact about Detroit – it once had a huge working class industry right underneath the city’s streets.
Detroit’s salt mines are like an underground city within the city. It is a massive expanse of 1,500 acres and over 100 miles of roads right under everyone’s feet. It stretches from Dearborn, located in the northwest of Detroit’s metropolitan area, via Melvindale to Allen Park in the southwest.
Credit: John D. Nysteun
The Detroit Salt and Manufacturing Company operated the mine until 1983 but then falling salt prices forced production to cease. At its peak in the 1920s, 1940s and ’50s, the mine was open to the public with guided tours – a popular trip for school classes. Today, the entrance to the mine is only for delivery trucks; public tours have not been conducted since the 1980s. As the following images suggest, a mine visit must’ve been quite something.
Credit: Detroit Memories
I know what you’re thinking: how on earth did truck-loads of salt end up underneath Detroit? Well about 400 million years, when the first humans weren’t even a speck on the horizon, an area today known as the Michigan Basin was then separated from the ocean and kept sinking lower and lower into the earth. Salty ocean water kept pouring into it until gradually, the ocean receded, leaving the water to evaporate and huge salt deposits behind.
Credit: Detroit Memories
Today, the Great Lakes rest on the basalt rock and the salt layer, some 1200 feet below, being the largest salt deposit in the world – some 71 trillion tons of unmined salt remain according to some estimates.
Credit: WSU
Salt. Big deal. It’s not oil or gold or diamonds. True, but there was a time when salt was a precious commodity. In early China, for example, salt coins were a popular means of payment and salt cakes served the same purpose in the Mediterranean. The Romans often paid their soldiers in salt – that’s why we’re still using the term salary today from Latin ‘sal’ – salt. Fancy that.
Credit: WSU
They continued mining the Detroit Salt Mines until 1983 when lack of profit shut them down. The mine was unused until 1997 until The Detroit Salt Company LLC purchased it. They began producing salt again in 1988, and they’re still chipping away today. But they are no longer mining table salt. They now mine road salt, which, thanks to the harsh Detroit winters, is in high demand.