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well everybody you got a behind-the-scenes look at me fumbling around with the computer to start off this program um i'm really happy uh you can join us um either on zoom or tuning in on facebook live and um really happy to have meyer marcotte and lynn ledeboer with us to tell us about um emerson carey a great uh important figure from the history of hutchinson in this area um and i'll let um lynn and myron hopefully you can tell us a bit about yourselves and your background as well as you know of course the subject matter but real quick i just want to run run through a few things that are coming up at the library um this coming thursday august 20th we have our online book discussion and the book is the nickel boys by coulson whitehead um the i'm i'm going to moderate it and my co-host is going to be cheryl wilson from kipcor um and cheryl actually grew up in tallahassee where the book is set so it'll be a really interesting enlightening event and you'd be welcome to come and just listen and learn even if you haven't read the book yourself um and then a week from today on the 25th at 7 p.m we have our fourth tuesday photography program this month's presenter is kaylee nisly and she's going to talk about her photo project and show that she put on called from refugee to home kayleen works with um refugee resettlement um agency and has uh has taken a lot of really powerful photos of the the refugee and immigrant experience um and then coming up the week after that we've got uh the mystery lovers book discussion on september 2nd and you can learn more about all this stuff on our facebook page or on our website so without um without further ado i am glad that we got the facebook live going because last time i couldn't get it to work so that's definitely a leg up on last time i'll turn it over to lynn and myron all right well thank you and thank you all for showing up and hope you enjoy what we've got to tell you i'll start with a little bit about myself i'm originally from chicago so i've come a great distance just to say hello but i actually worked for the reno county historical society i worked there for 12 years although i am no longer there but that's where i developed my love for salt and just as has been wonderful exploring the the domain of salt so i'll let myron take it yeah i originally worked for the kerry salt company later the hutchinson salt company for about 38 years and then i retired and went to work for the reno county historical society i still work for stratica the underground salt museum um and i've been there about seven and a half years and i have a natural love for salt having worked in salt now for 45 years this august 11th so we will uh start our little program here and let's see of course where's the share all right so we're going to be talking about emerson carey and lynn and i wrote a book about emerson carrie which came out about a year and a half ago um it's about his life and if um i'm sure most of you are familiar with kerry salt company um the kerry salt company has been in hutchinson since 1901 they're now defunct there is no kerry salt company anymore um the company got sold to north american salt and uh over time uh the salt plant got shut down and um torn down but the salt mine is still going so that's the the last assault company that that emerson carries started which by coincidence was the very last salt companies start in hutchinson kansas and if you know the any of the history of salt in hutchinson there was a lot of salt companies here so this is the book kansas tycoon emerson cary building an empire from coal ice and salt you if you don't have it and you'd like to buy it after you hear this presentation you can get it from amazon um or you can come to stratica we have a lot of books to sell yet and so this is emerson carrie and uh when he was a young boy picture on the left he actually his father came to kansas to seek out a free land you know they had the land grant um what was that called lynn the land the homestead act homestead act yes emerson was born in 1863 in marion indiana um and they moved quite frequently because his father was always looking for that free 80 acres or whatever it was but eventually his father came out to kansas and then he sent for his family at that time the family was emerson was the third oldest the first boy and the family was 10 children and the mother nancy and they they got an oxen wagon oxen drawn wagon headed out from there at that time they were in eastern illinois and uh walked to kansas actually walked to sterling because that's where samuel was and um if you can imagine uh nancy kerry had just had that summer an infant she she just had a child and brought that infant all the way to kansas with nine other children one of the one of the really interesting stories that we tell in the book is they were they were fairly destitute family i mean that many mouths to feed it would be and so while they were coming they were coming through missouri they happened upon a potato farmer in missouri and um they were getting a little desperate for some food so nancy's stopped the the wagon and they got off and all uh ten of the kids climbed out of the wagon and the farmer looked up and she got this croc and she was going to trade the croc for as many potatoes as he'd let her have andy she walked up to him and offered the croc and she said he says well lady you can keep your croc i'll just give you as many potatoes as you'd like having seen all these children and um and that's that's one of the one of the many many stories of emerson gary that are in the book he did eventually make it to hutchinson after living in mcpherson and halsted and then back in mcpherson and then walked bachelson one day because he was fed up with farming and got a job right away in a coal yard and most people maybe most people don't realize this but in the 1800s 1880s there was no natural gas so either burned wood or you burned coal and the coal was all brought in by trains so there were coal yards and they would distribute coal from those coal yards and he got a job doing that well that was just one of many things he did and was actually his very first industry now emerson himself later got married and he had four boys and these are his boys um well i'm going to mess these names up and i know it it's from left is charles is it howard now yeah emerson's in the middle um then i think it's june for junior they just called him june for short and he was actually the youngest and what's the last one's name charles charles okay yeah i said charles twice i must have missed one um let me drink lunch yeah so those are his boys and they later took over the carrie enterprises which was many invest and we'll talk about those here in a second charles william howard and emerson william yeah all right so here is just a little synopsis of of all the companies that emerson carrie either started or was involved in um starting first with the kerry cole company that's where he started and then after working for two years in the coal business he bought with a partner started his own coal company later on he started to carry ice and cold storage because uh there was no refrigeration in those days so of course everybody had ice boxes and he had to bring in ice and he also had about the same time and maybe sooner started the kansas hyde and first company where they would buy buffalo hide and and furs of different kinds then later it was the kerry salt company started in 1901 he was like i said before the actually the last soul cut me the start used to be a trolley service in hutchinson and he started the inner urban trolley he didn't start it he bought it it was horse drawn and he electrified it because he also had an electric company which we left off in this list people's people's power and light later he started the hutchison and northern railway which in a in a form still exists today it runs between the mine and cargill salt and they they transport cars between lines so it would be like between the santa fe line and the union pacific line and then he also owned the hutchinson gazette newspaper he helped he was president of the kansas soda ash chemical and alkali company he was hired on there to fix a mast and he did fix that mass he was also hired on to help with the hudson box board and paper company it was a mess also it's been mismanaged and he got that to work and one of the ways he got that to work was bringing the hutchison egg case filler company which is the little stuff that supports the eggs in a in a case of eggs he actually brought that company down from omaha and used the paper the paper company to make egg case fillers which was a brilliant idea and saved that company now he also started the carry real estate investment company and some of you may have remembered the salt city savings alone back when we used to have savings and loans and lastly he inherited the fairlawn cemetery uh when a person he was helping to develop that um basically walked away now one of the we're going to tell our favorite stories and one of my favorite stories one i wrote about in the book was was one that's called the fire trap ordinance story and you can see this building is a it's a big what we call balloon structure building and um at the time kerry salt company this was in 1902 was the only salt company in hutchinson city limits proper well the salt company in those days was a very cutthroat business to be in because of all the salt companies that were in hutchinson they were at one time i think in 1901 there was probably 10 most of which belonged to what is called the salt trust the salt tress was was more or less headed by joy morton before he had morton salt company and there was one salt company called the hutchison kansas salt company and it was run by a guy named frank vincent who just happened to be mayor off and on for 10 years from about 1998 to about 1908 but he was not mayor at the time that the fire trap ordinance was was started although i'm sure he would know who to talk to to get that started so it was always my speculation that this was just a way with for the for the assault trust to try to do away with another competitor called kerry salt and so the fire trap ordinance basically banned balloon structure buildings like barns like this building you see here and here's the kerry salt company which is at b in maine between b and c on main street um about the place about where um there's an old dylan store there which is now the salvation army thrift store about in that area and you can see those big balloon structure buildings and basically what it said was you cannot build that type of building because they can't put it out if there is a fire because in those days the fire department was basically a hand-driven pump and um bucket brigades so they couldn't put out big fires very easily so they thought well we'll just pass this ordinance well when they passed the ordinance there was a couple of structures being built already one was a a really big barn on main street and the city said well since you're already building this big barn you can just go ahead and finish it well that sent a message to everybody in hutchinson that said if you are currently working on a building project then you can continue it well emerson carey had been building the kerry salt company and adding buildings you can see the buildings go way down they go they went down for about a block and a half was constantly adding on and building buildings so he just decided to go ahead and keep building the city said no you can't do that they issued a warrant for his arrest he was arrested he was put in jail he bonded out for 25 dollars which in 1902 was quite a quite a bit of money he keep he kept bonding out they kept arresting him over and over and over again to the point that the hutch news wrote the article about it and the article stated that if that kept going in about a year he would pay 9 000 to add one room to his building but that didn't deter emerson carey because basically nothing deterred emerson cary and he kept building and kept building and the amazing part of this story is that to me is that it said in the article that i read in the hudson news that the city grew tired and gave up which is amazing to me because you know nowadays the city would never give up you you always lose in a battle with the city and at least i always have so like i said the salt uh trust we we think or at least i think was behind this through frank vincent what shortly after this all happened uh and they realized that they couldn't stop him this way frank vincent showed up at emerson carrie's office and he said look carrie i'm gonna do you a big favor and i'm going to buy the carry salt company from you for way more than this worth and and you're going to sell it to me and or you're going to regret it you're going to regret it because i have 50 000 barrels of salt and i will flood the market with that 50 000 barrels of salt and um and drive you out of business and this is this is by far my favorite quote from everest and carrie and we have a lot of quotes on him in the book he looked at frank vincent and he said sir do your worst i have seen a fly make a bull waggle his tail i have seen the little guy make the big guy move and and they they said all right have it your way and they flooded the market that 50 000 barrels of salt they lowered the price of salt it was i think 98 cents a barrel or something which seems extremely cheap to me to as low as 45 cents a barrel it said kerry was selling salt as cheap as 45 cents a barrel and um emerson said you know they didn't they didn't understand at this time emerson had the kerry salt company which was his third company he had he still had the kerry cole company he still had kansas hides and furs and he had the kerry ice company which i think at that time was called kansas ice and cold storage and all those companies together were kind of supporting each other and he said i never lost a dollar in that whole venture yeah i was selling salt for less that it cost me to make it but overall my company made money they didn't realize how hooked up we were is was his statement and uh that that was one of the amazing things about him he knew if he stuck with something long enough and outlasted somebody long enough he would win and uh he almost always did second thing i'd like to talk about is cars because i really like cars and uh emerson carey was a car nut uh and he was a speeder he liked he liked to race his cars well this white steamer 1907 was the very first car he ever owned it was the first steamer in hutchinson um and the white steamer um was a very prestigious vehicle um the president of the united states roosevelt which which would have been teddy roosevelt um had one now he was scared to death of the thing but he had one and emerson drove that thing around and he he would have been very very familiar with steam because of course um all his industries were powered by steam his ice plant was powered by steam his electric plant was powered by steam his salt company was powered by steam so steve wouldn't have been anything he would have understood steam very well well he understood steam fairly well but he didn't understand possibly the workings of this white steamer because one day he left the fuel on and actually blew it blew it up and blew the lid right off the hood right off of it he wasn't hurt nobody else was hurt but uh that's what happened to the steamer so he bought another car he bought a winton and i'm sure everybody's heard of a winton um actually nobody's heard of one because they weren't super popular but they were one of the very first vehicles mass-produced or it wasn't really mass-produced they were built by hand every one of them before ford developed his techniques and we i looked up this car and i did a lot of research on winton's because i wanted to understand them and i could not i will call this a 1909 but what i found out looking at this car and examining all the wintons this one has the front fenders of a 1910 win winton and the back fenders of a 1908 win so i'm assuming that this was a mid-year model and uh we'll call it into 1909 even though it wasn't any difference and this is setting on main street in h tchinson one thousand block of north main i think uh eagle radio is there right now um no wait a minute that'd be the next block two blocks down um and the house was a house he built excuse me and um he later had to sell that house he's forced to sell that house to stay out of bankruptcy um so that's the win the next one is the pierce arrow he had this in about 1912. um story behind the pierce arrows he loved the speed and the pierce arrow was a speedster and one day he was with a a gentleman and i i think it was when he was running for senate or he was already a state senator and um he was speeding up and down the roads and probably showing off a little bit for a guy and a million milligan and mr milligan had stopped by the side of the road to have lunch with his family now okay maybe roads weren't as busy back then but that seems like a stupid place to stop and have your family run around and he had a small boy the boy had a dog it's kind of a sad story i love dogs and uh he heard me million heard this noise and he looked down the road and he saw this pierce arrow speeding down the road he grabbed his son he couldn't grab the dog in time the poor dog got hit milligan got really mad jumped in his car which by the way had 100 horsepower didn't say the model because the newspapers in those days were really good at leaving a lot of detail especially when they were trying to trash somebody like emerson carrie because of the politics um and he chased down carrie and gave him an earful and carrie said honestly i did not see the dog at all or i would have tried to miss it or stopped or something and and i'm sure that was the truth because because emerson always tried to do as lincoln would have done he was inspired by lincoln and so i'm sure he would tell the truth when he he had to the last car i want to talk about is called the marmon and it's like it was a prestigious car it looks kind of fancy when you look at it and he bought one but here's the interesting thing the very first indianapolis 500 open wheel race was won by a marmon and that made their name now you know they probably couldn't compete with chevy and dodge and ford and some of the others there was a lot of competition you know hutchinson had his own car company called the sellers for a while there's a few of those around um and so he owned a mormon uh not a lot more to say about the marmon except for that it was um a prestigious car and and uh as you can tell um lady in the fancy dress and the guy with the hat on of course i think everybody kind of dressed that way back then if they weren't digging ditches and uh the last thing is uh this is kind of a joint thing between me and lynn here this is a map these are called fire maps there were a lot of fire maps of just about every city back in the 1880s 1890s 1900s and this is one that shows the kerry salt company and i wanted to show you some more of the you know if i find my mouse carry salt companies long hair these would be the fire trap buildings um and the beach which was owned by kerry which is a a pond with bath houses it only it only went for a little while a year or two and the county courthouse in jail now the interesting thing about the county courthouse is the county courthouse was across the street it was a wood frame structure and it burnt to the ground as most uh courthouses did in those days and they built a new fancy brick one there it was a really nice building [Music] and you can see it in that one picture of the kerry saw company over in the corner well over time the uh the foundation after about 18 20 years started the crack well the kerry saw company's right there right and what do salt companies do they put down wells in hutchinson down to the salt structure 650 feet down they pump water down they dissolve the salt out and that leaves a void well um there are salt wells all along this alleyway and um the city offices right now are right in here in hutchinson and there was brian wells you could still see him in the alley clear back in the 1980s you can still see him um they have taken a pulled pull them all or done something with him after the big gas explosions here in hutch they tried to do something about all those whales and they were everywhere um and so there was one right here in this area and the county said that the well was sinking and that caused the courthouse to start crack where it cracks so bad that they eventually had to um well they've actually demolished the building but they had to get out of it and for a while the city or the county was all over the place until they built the existing courthouse the art deco one which carry actually ended up buying the courthouse but the county sued emerson cary because they they claim that um the brine will is causing the courthouse to sink well um emerson kerry actually won that he was apparently able to prove that it was actually a poor foundation and that caused the cracking in the building and interestingly enough like i said before dylan's was on that corner for years and the salvation army is still in that same dylan's building and it's fine it always has been fine so apparently the county was wrong and i'm going to do that's all i'm going to say for now i think we're planning to take questions at the end of lynn's presentation and lynn you can take it away all right well i'm going to take it right from here and talk a little bit i'm going to focus mo mostly on emerson carrie's nature his personality kind of what some of those driving forces were that that caused him to be so successful some of the things we found out is that he was incredibly frugal he was very very efficient incredibly resourceful and uh the beach as you see here is actually a good example of that because as he sunk the well for uh his brine his salt brine operation that excess water had to go somewhere so it went into the beach and it was just an example of him sort of giving back to the community but also finding a way to do something with that excess water um and it wasn't just a little puddle pond it was actually you know it had actual concrete and not concrete but actual established bath houses as you see there um so it's just that's kind of the first example of how he utilized everything within his companies um and nothing went went to waste my rent if you'd go ahead this is a slide just showing that this is this is the kerry park this was land that he owned as well this is showing a little bit another side of his nature showing how uh he was very community minded um he gave i think it was about 210 acres to the city um to establish this wonderful park which is one of his lasting legacies i'll let you go ahead and myron unless you've got something to add about that okay he he lived in this particular um home which uh once he moved out he donated the house uh which became the women's civic center so another example of his community mindedness uh thinking always about the community and um that was uh it was recently a building torn down i can't recall offhand what year that was torn down but um unfortunately it was made into a parking lot for hutchinson for the hutchinson public library all right if you want to go ahead so um this is an early photo of the cari pudubar coal company and i'm showing you this this this little office which was in in the coal yard um to kind of to illustrate just how frugal uh carrie actually was early on one of carrie's um first jobs that he got around 1882 was working for a man named marshall hale and mr hale did not trust banks so mr hale kept all of his money in a pocketbook well one of carrie's one of emerson carrie's jobs was to hang on to that pocketbook and wouldn't you know it kerry lost the money it had 60 whole dollars in it and that sixty dollars was quite a bit of money back in 1882 and to give you an indication of carrie's um his integrity and his frugalness on his very little meager salary that he earned from mr hale he was able to pay every single cent back to mr hale he was also able to send a little bit back to his family out of his meager earnings but the way he did it was by actually sleeping in in the coal office at the time which would have been very similar to this coal office so it's a really good indication just about how how frugal he was which was real typical of of industrial tycoons at the time and just the fact that he you know he was able to scrimp and save in order to repay what he lost let's go ahead myron um this slide shows um how now that now the salt company has actually uh taken top billing as you see um the coal companies kind of dropped down in significance just a little bit the kansas hyde company has also dropped down in significance well the kerry salt company has kind of risen to the top right here and what i wanted to indicate here was how he's showing once again how he didn't he wasted nothing um because here what he did was he began using waste steam from like ice compressors and um and waste steam he used that to heat his salt pans that were used to evapor evaporate the salt the salt brine into salt so nothing was wasted all of his companies used it used waste products or by-products to fuel the other companies um and so it was just that constant reuse the constant reuse of byproducts and waste that allowed him to remain frugal and resourceful to create really successful enterprises myron go ahead here's another good good photograph that indicates if you look at that wagon you'll notice that it says ice but you'll often also notice that it says the carry coal company on it so already he's he's showing that that wagon was used for two different companies brought you your ice but it also brought you your call so he was very resourceful in the fact that he he utilized both he utilized his equipment he utilized his resources for both companies um just kind of indicating again his his you know those multiple uses his frugal nature that type of thing um it's very likely that he also used waste coal from his from his coal operations the small pieces that couldn't be sold to fire boilers that that generated steam to make ice he was probably also using waste mechanical energy to power the electricity in his plants so nothing was wasted he utilized all kinds of of waste and byproducts to help fuel his other companies myron go ahead right now we're seeing just the expansion of his ice operation his refrigeration operation also his venture into new technologies as myron indicated with his love of vehicles his love of fast cars this is a good um slide showing you um is the transition of horse and buggy horse and buggy wagons or wagon you know wagons horse-drawn wagons to deliver the ice all the way up into those newfangled modern uh modern engine powered vehicles there to deliver the ice and he that is another thing that carrie that emerson kerry was really noted for was was his entry into new technologies so um that's kind of why i wanted to include this this particular slide uh just to show you his how the ice industry had advanced and his his love of new technology do you want to go ahead myron so emerson is very successful at this point this is uh his headquarters this was built in 1916. he just designed and built this building that still stands today at the corner of avenue b and poplar and hutchinson um this building as you can see here may have seemed a little extravagant for for him being so so fruit from you know i'm trying to indicate how frugal he was um but uh there's a reason for that and and myron i'll let you go ahead oh yeah go ahead for the next one oh next slide okay yeah there we go so that that office building was actually sold uh back in night back in 2004 um a couple purchased that that building and they went through and they renovated it entirely and sadly a couple years later there was a large storm that destroyed and damaged much of the new renovation and uh the repairs to the renovation required that the ceiling joists be pulled out and at that point what they found in the ceiling joists were these wooden um pieces from kerry lilly table salt crates so these these pieces of wood that had been used in crates that um contained table salts were actually used in the construction of that fancy headquarters office building and i i think this is just so indicative of emerson carey's frugal nature he he did not waste anything he reused everything incredibly he had incredibly efficient operations because of that and his resourceful nature he was kind of one of the original you know no waste reuse recycle and reduce and so i feel i really wanted to include that because i thought that was quite quite indicative of what his nature was very frugal um and that is that is how he became um that is one of the things that led to his great success and i think that may be it myron is it so we hope we've given you a little bit indication of what of what emerson carry was like and some of the companies that some of the companies that he was successful with and we we hope you enjoyed that and if you have any questions we'd be glad to answer them yeah great thank you everyone i um you can um unmute yourself if you want to uh speak a question out loud there's a little microphone symbol in the lower left of your zoom interface if you want to unmute yourself just uh feel free to do that and jump in with a question you can also type in the chat and people watching on facebook you can also type in the chat if you've got a question i'll kick things off um you know you talk about him being so frugal um i wonder how that how does that translate into the he must have eventually had a pretty big labor force do you have any information about what he was like as a boss whether he was pretty tight fisted with his employees or or you know what about about that well from from all indications he was a good boss from all indications he created kind of a family atmosphere um i think myron has some more antidote um stories about that just handed down from working at the at the salt mine so i'll let myron talk to that uh yeah well um i started in 1975 for the carry salt company and they were still the old timers were still talking about working for emerson cary at that time and they had some of them had either worked for him or worked with people that worked for him but his sons howard and herod jr jake um were just like him and so um not only were they great people to work for they always had christmas dinners for the employees we had several christmas dinners when i when i was there they would give them christmas turkeys hams that kind of thing and the frugality was handed down too because the kerry salt company when i worked for them produced their own power from waste steam um and also heated the plant and uh evaporated salt with that steam and he heated the plant and on kerry boulevard there was fairly new offices that were built in the 50s that was heated by the by the excess theme too so frugality was a was a normal carry thing to do you've talked to both of you a lot about how successful he was how good he was at making money and yet you shared one photo there of a house he had to sell because he was having to deal with bankruptcy right can you talk about that that's your contradiction in success and and also bankruptcy sure and and uh and the book explains it very well and i'll summarize it a little bit um kansas had a a land rush like everybody like every uh land boom in the 1880s and uh carrie like so many others bought into that land boom and and uh some land was going for you know as much as a thousand dollars an acre which was tremendous in in those times and um and the kerry himself kind of blamed this a little bit on his banker uh i'm not i'm not sure who the banker was but that uh he said that he had the money to pay off a loan he had and the banker said you know why don't you reinvest that money instead of paying off the loan so he reinvests the money well land values dropped to absolutely nothing quickly and um the bubble burst in other words and so a lot of people were left holding the bill and of course the banks were calling in um the loans you know because they needed the money so kerry instead of going bankrupt um he started selling off everything he could sell off to keep his coal company because that's all he had at that time and um even though you could not lose your house to bankruptcy um kerry decided to sell his house to pay off his debt so he sold his house that house on on main street probably spilled off all his cars um and um he rented the house on uh on west 11th and i think i read today uh kind of looking at all this again um he ran it for six dollars and 75 cents a month which it's like unbelievably cheap a lot of money then right and uh and so he was able to pay all his debts off and didn't file bankruptcy or didn't go bankrupt and uh and that went for him that went a long ways with people in this community because he was able to do that so even though he had to sell that house off and of course later he built willowbrook which was his private mansion and and the private golf course 18-hole golf course he was the first one in the state to have a private golf course i don't know if anybody has a private golf course anymore but he had one and will bricks now a town in his own after his family convinced him to start selling off properties and letting friends and relatives build there but that's that's why he had to sell that house and that's why that happened and he he certainly wasn't successful in every enterprise that he went into that that that is really one of the times when he wasn't as financially successful as being so over extended um another one that he couldn't really succeed with was the gazette when he um took over the gazette he discovered that he was not a newspaper man that didn't that didn't work out very well for him and so that was one of the one of the few i would say not as successful um ventures that he got into was the gazette and the soda ash plant you know they they hired him on to the sodas print and made him president even though he wouldn't invest money in it because he didn't think it would ever work and he was right and they wanted him to save it because the whole community had money in that and and several communities newton macpherson sterling they that people in those cities had money in it a lot of people had money in it and it was a big big operation employed like 400 people i believe it was huge and um so he became president and he did manage to save it but what he did was he ended up selling it to the solvay company who was the big producer of soda ash in the united states and uh they were very good at producing soda ash whereas uh the hutchinson sword ash company was very bad at producing soda ash and um and and that uh and by selling it off that saved the company and um he was able to sell it off where everybody got their money back they didn't make a bunch of money on it but they did not lose a bunch of money which was he was actually kind of proud of being able to do that and uh sodash did why is it not here no more well uh sodash is there's a a natural occurring chemical called trona and it's in wyoming they mine trona up there and trona is soda ash so it's a it's a evaporate like salt but a little bit different what's it used for uh make explosives make glass they put it in soap they put in a lot of things and the reason it was so um it was because it was right around world war one at the time so they were hoping to capitalize on make using it in explosives for the first world war so on the i i'm wondering um you know at the was was kerry's uh salt company was was this the first salt company in in hutchinson or there how did that industry you know was he involved in identifying the potential of of the salt deposits under hutchinson or no no actually no he's it was actually the very last salt company in hutchinson so they they they started in 1901 salt started in 1887. ben blanchard uh was was a santa fe agent who developed south hutchinson kansas he he was drilling for oil because he thought wow if i find oil i could really sell south hutchinson and of course he was not successful in finding oil but he was close but he did discover salt and uh 1887 the first salt company which is still going is called cargo salt was borton salt and before that was humphrey guthrie gunther or something like that um and that salt company morton salt company and the salt mine are the three salt companies from that time period that still exists out of i think when you count the whole number there's like 15 salt companies that existed at one time 1880s 1890s so he was the last one to get on board which was probably the smart thing to do and like i said earlier he was able to produce salt at uh at a a cheaper rate because of because the frugality and sharing steam between all his companies wow cool you talked about one of his companies he owned was uh pachin or urban was that completely independent or was it part of the ark valley in urban that ran between wichita newton and and on out to hodge then you know that one well it connected it connected up to the arc valley but yeah it i think it was independent of the ark valley i don't you know it was i know there was some discussion about how they were utilizing the inner urban was utilizing the ark valley's lines uh rail uh rail the tracks yeah um but i believe it was independent and you know originally it was through the city you know the city was trying to get it um established and the the people they were contracting with were just not successful in in getting the inner urban up and running and again this was another case where emerson ended up coming in and was able to was able to get the inner urban up and running and making it a viable transportation you know company the uh interestingly enough uh the ark valley legacy uh bit the mine um as early as 2010 was was that what what had happened was of course they the ark valley was linked to the hutchison northern railroad which was linked to the hudson interurban and so they all the arc valley when it would come in the hutch at his station which is still there uh the station's at uh what what street is that on third no third yeah so a little brown brick building is still there uh there was there was the enter the ark valley depot so it used they all used the same lines well the ark valley went away as we all know um tore out all the lines up to the mine because from that point in the hutchinson was the h n railroad which was owned by kerry and of course kerry salt went out of business they they got bought out and the company that bought them didn't want the h n so they sold it off to a company i'm not going to mention their names because of lawsuits but a company owns it now and somebody was looking at maps and figured out that a little corner of the mine property that the tracks ran through was where they happened to build their rail link into santa fe from the mine and across that little piece of property and so the lawsuit incurred and was fought between the mine and uh and and and this little railroad which is the mine's fault they should have bought the h9 railroad and and uh they didn't do it which was the huge mistake on their part but uh um so that ark valley thing did come back and bite the mine later on so yeah they were all linked they were all independent independently owned by kerry did have to own two of them and he sold electricity to the ark valley um from the hutchinson inn he's because it was electric trolley railroad um and i think there was i i remember reading about that wichita so electricity i think newton sold electricity to him too yes to certain to power their railroads any more questions you want to say a little bit about about stratica you know since you're what's happening there since you worked there and yeah i i work for stratica the underground salt museum if you've never been there we are open we've been open since june first um when we we you have to wear a mask if you come to stratica we take a lot of precaution we do a lot of cleaning um because this covered thing but as far as we know there have been no outbreaks or no exposure um and we're still getting people from all over the country so that's kind of a shock but whatever um we have canceled all of our events for this year so murder and the mind dinner theaters are not occurring this year uh nor are the 5k run the or the toured assault bicycle ride underground but we do have tours on a daily basis and uh you've never been to stratica you ought to come out sometime um it's really cool to go 650 feet underground uh it's it's a really big thrill to a lot of people because most people will never make it that deep into the earth in their whole lifetime um it scares some people a few um but for the most part uh is is is a great experience our uh our google business our trip advisor scores are all 4.8 or better um everybody just absolutely loves us so if you get a chance come out and see us and support us we we like everybody are definitely struggling we're running at about 58 percent um of what would be normal for this time of year and all summer has kind of been that way um so or wait till the coven thing is over it'll be over hopefully by this time next year and uh and then we can get back to normal whatever that was yeah i wouldn't wouldn't that be great well and uh normally this would be in person and and you would probably have some books to books to sign and to and to sell so well if you want if you want books signed if you come out to stratica and buy a book i'll sign it and if you really want glenn to sign it i'll take it to her and she'll sign it yeah so that'd be great you can buy them at stratica you can buy them on amazon or on the history press website i think and we also have a copy you can check out from the library and the ebook is on hoopla which you can access with your library card as well so i've i haven't had a chance to to read it all yet but i i sure will uh i've got it borrowed on hoopla so i'm gonna i'm gonna read some more about uh emerson carrie for sure and uh i guess with that we'll um uh we'll con conclude the program thanks again you too and uh everybody have a have a great rest of your evening thanks for having us thanks for having us thank you for cheering thank you all right great well i ended the live stream so it's just us now but so i'll just uh sign it sign it off the rest of you thank you so much for coming and uh just uh watch your emails and facebook and i really appreciate everybody participating in the library stuff so how many did you have finally sam do you know well we had 11 on zoom and then it seemed like it was um there were there were a handful of people on facebook too i was able to get the game going after about five or six minutes in um so it was streaming on facebook um yeah so that you know that's that's pretty good um and uh and i'm sure some more people will watch it later because it it'll be i'm i'll get the full video including the beginning part posted tomorrow and we always have people watch it on their own time later so and there's some uh debates on tv now or whatever or not debates but you know political stuff's going on right now right right our library folks are civically engaged by so i'm sure yes are watching those uh those conventions yeah yeah all right myron could i ask a question before you sign off sure on the salt mines where different companies and organizations store their records there how difficult or easy is it to get those records oh it's really easy if you own them underground vaults and storage they recently changed their name they're now called uvns because they're an international company now they have a record center in england now and they started in hutchinson at the salt mine in 1959 and they have been operating since they take up quite a bit of area underground but maybe i don't know a 20th of the mine or less it's not very much of the mine totally but they do take up quite a bit of area um and striker actually rents from underground vaults and storage which rents from the mine um that sounds complicated but that's how they worked it out and and uh we jointly own the shaft that we put down for stratica they put that down in 2005 and um so both uvns and and rio county historic society both own that well uh and pay for it and maintain that um but yeah they they're they can send up you call for a record uh most of the time of course all the records are going electronic now what they store the most of is movie films that's really what their bread and butter is and um they store a lot of movie films and it's simply because in hutchinson kansas it cost two dollars and i don't know it's say two dollars and fifty cents a cubic foot a year to store boxes of movie film where in california it was like 200 a cubic foot a year well for many reasons it was on the surface and everything's expensive in california and so they send all their films out all the big production companies are here in hutchinson um underground vaults also has a uh uh a place in the limestone mines in kansas city uh they do store films up there also um so but all kinds of records uh the big petroleum companies all store magnetic media here uh and uh courthouses all store all the county courthouses in kansas store something here at the mine a lot of it's old paper that they don't want to mess with they don't want to digitize but they also for one reason or another don't want to destroy it and so and right now there's a very big server farm underground that underground vaults and storage actually backs up the backup companies so you know you see these big companies to advertise you know back up your computer with them well underground also storage backs them up so that stuff gets backed up a lot so everything is bar coded isn't it myron yeah everything in the box is workloaded and uh there's a position every position is is barcoded on shelving underground um they have 120 300 foot by 50 foot bays full of racks and boxes it's just it's like going through um i don't know if you've seen indiana jones with the big shelves where you know oh yeah the warehouse big warehouse that's what it's like and there's natural i mean i guess it's natural climate control down there right yep yes about 40 humidity all the time 68 degrees year round never changes with all the explosions that were going on years ago because of the gas leakage how is all that kept out of the area where all the storage happens yeah it it uh and i was looking at the mine at the time and stratica takes people for tours yeah um that there was never any gas in the mine at all we monitored for gas all the time and we still do um both stratica does and the mind does but um all kinds of gases not just methane but also carbon monoxide oxygen all that stuff gets monitored constantly um and uh the the the route of travel of that gas leak from western hutchinson western reno county across hutchinson was a very narrow um area and they the geologist the the area under hutchinson is some of the most studied area in in kansas and the geologists determined that what they think happened was it followed what they call a sand lens or a riverbed that went through at that time and so it was sand and so that gas was able to go through that sand and wherever there was a bright an old brine whale and there was a lot of them in hutch that that would come up as a water geyser and it was all above the salt it wasn't below the salt because salt is impenetrable to gas um it's self-sealing and gas can't get through it and uh and so to go down and come into the mine wouldn't be a possibility but we were afraid that it might get into the shaft because the original shaft it touches in solid is wood uh it's it's concrete through the water table but then it's wood from the rest of the way down so about 500 feet of wooden shaft and so we're a little worried about that but it didn't it got really close it got to that trailer park on uh east 4th but and that's where the solvay sodash plant was and that's why there was brian wells there and they came up through there um but that's all it's all been pumped out there is no more gas so any other questions yeah that's a are there i don't suppose there were still mules when you were when you started working in the there were never any mules at this mine oh okay this was a modern mine it was electric right right well that's good good for the mules they were at lions and canopus though all the other mines had mules but not uh this mine was actuall a very late starter it was opened in 1923 all the other mines were open in the 1890s wow that's the end and i don't i wonder i mean and the reason these are there is because of the ancient ocean over it right it's a salt deposit from an ancient ocean they think they don't know 100 we hosted oh it's been two or three years ago we hosted a geology convention where they actually talked about that salt bed and they've made some discoveries looking at the salt they see these chevrons in it that tell them how it grew and there's a lot of debate on how this salt bed was laid down some think that the ancient ocean theory doesn't hold water very well no pun intended yeah well maybe it was but but uh others think that uh the salt actually became so strong that it just deposited um on the on the on the ocean floor and kind of like what's going on at the great salt lake um and uh and bonneville which they were also you know oceans at one time um so there's a lot of debate on how it actually got laid down but it's definitely i mean when you look at you go down there you look at you see the the strata uh white and dark and and it it looks like it was laid down by water i mean it just looks that way yeah cool well i'll um i'll go ahead and uh sign us off now um thanks again myron and lynn and everybody for coming and uh and uh oh next i forgot next month our our local program is well it's going to be about frank lloyd wright actually in the right house in wichita so that should be an interesting one hope all can join us for that all right have a nice evening everyone thank you guys have a good one too bye-bye thank you