The ghostly salt city beneath Detroit

The Detroit News ^ | ? | By Patricia Zacharia

[Russian Sage]

This giant truck travels on a glittering salt road 1,137 feet beneath Detroit, carrying newly-blasted salt several thousand feet to a primary crusher station.

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.

[LiteKeeper]

bump

[martin_fierro]

Detroit Rocksalt City.

[Lokibob]

bump interesting

[Charles Henrickson]

"The only dirty part of this job is going down to work,"

A miner inconvenience.

[hookman]

super size that fry please.

[CanadianBloodAmericanHeart]

I live over that deal. The Ontario side has a huge mine that goes underneath the town and at about 3:30 everyday, 3 to 6 blasts can be heard and felt. It sounds like a rumble of thunder and the earth shakes pretty hard.

[Chewbacca]

I would hate to be living above this mine when the ground slumps and forms a sink hole. It just might take half the town with it.

[ExGeeEye]

Looks like Dwarrowdelf, with trucks. "Don't drive so fast, Gene; last week Fred wrecked his hemi on a pile of balrog droppings." :)

[grellis]

I'm a lifelong Michigan native and I had no idea these mines existed. Gotta find out if the tours are still going on.

[tang-soo]

SODIUM

Just about everyone has heard the story of Sodom and Gemorrah. Even if one is not familiar with the scriptural account, you can turn on the television any time of the week and see the modern version. The account of Lot and his wife fleeing the twin cities has Lot's wife turning back almost nostalgically to gaze upon them one more time, and was turned into a pillar of salt.

Salt, sulphur, and Sodom are inseparably linked in scripture. The area was completely dotted with salt pits. The word Sodom is the basis from which we get the word sodium. When someone is on a 'sodium' free diet, they are abstaining from salt. Salt (sodium) springs forth from Sodom to be used later to establish the principle meaning of the 'covenant of salt' made between YHVH and His people.

B'midbar 18:19
"All the heave offerings of the holy things, which the children of Israel offer unto YHVH, have I given thee, and thy sons and thy daughters with thee, by a statute forever: it is to be a covenant of salt forever before YHVH unto thee and to thy SEED after thee."

Salt was the ingredient of the covenant because salt represented the will of YHVH concerning HIS people. Salt was to preserve that which it was applied to, but salt does not take on the flavor or attributes of that which it is sent to preserve. It represented the idea of changing others, but remaining pure itself. YHVH commanded Lot and his wife to separate themselves from the wicked city of SODOM. The covenant of salt was YHVH's reminder to His people to influence the nations but not to let the nations influence them. The irony was that by looking back at Sodom, Lot's wife ended up being preserved none the less.

Shalom Alecheim!

Source www.wildbranch.org

[CanadianBloodAmericanHeart]

I know!! It is really huge, and the Canadian mine is situated right on the Detroit River and freighter after freighter has been loaded up just about everyday for decades right there. Apparently they have some pretty complex tunnel sysytem that would prevent a cave in....lets hope!

[CanadianBloodAmericanHeart]

There are no longer tours on the Canadian side...maybe if the gov't can figure out how to create a 'salt mine tour tax', they will start up again.