Salt mines beneath Detroit

Like a Jules Verne fantasy, a ghostly city with its own network of four lane highways lies deep beneath the industrial heart of Detroit, its crystalline walls glittering and gleaming in the flickering light. It is a world of no night or day.

It is a world of salt.

This gigantic salt mine, 1,200 feet beneath the surface, spreads out over more than 1,400 acres with 50 miles of roads. It lies underneath Dearborn's Rouge complex , much of Melvindale and the north end of Allen Park. The mine shaft opening is in Detroit.

Mules, lowered by rope down the narrow shaft into the mine, were used in the early mining operations. Once down in the mines, they stayed there until they died.

Workers decended in a two-level elevator in which six men pressed face-to-face during the long ride down.

Getting equipment down into the massive cavern provided many problems. Pickup trucks, jeeps and large trucks had to be cut up or disassembled and lowered down the shaft piece by piece, to be reassembled in shop areas below. Large dump truck tires too big for the shaft had to be compressed and bound before they would fit down the opening.