Salt Of The Earth

When you talk about agriculture in Utah you have the usual array of crops that end up on your dinner table. Wheat, corn, barley- all crops that grow in soil just like that. But we're heading for a Utah harvest taking place well beneath the soil.

It's like something out of a science fiction movie; a man navigating a mysterious maze of dark underground tunnels. But Redmond salt mine foreman Kyle Bosshardt knows where he's going, and what he can expect around the next turn. He says, "We've had geologists tell us the deposits are about 5-thousand feet deep, so, from surface to almost 5-thousand feet deep, it's solid salt!"

Salt mining in the United States is a 2 billion dollar a year business. The deposits here at Redmond were formed millions of years ago from large bodies of salt water that once covered the region. But those horizontal deposits were dramatically altered by violent geological shifts in the earth.

Now, you're probably wondering, just as we were, how did all this pure salt survive? Well, the way we hear it at some point during the Jurassic age a series of volcano's spread ash all over this part of Utah. It was that thick layer of volcanic ash that preserved and protected these deposits.

Historians believe animals and local native tribes discovered the first signs of sea salt here. Then in the late 1800's Utah's earliest settlers turned it into a business. The Bosshardt family took over operations at Redmond in the 1950's, continuing sales that targeted salt for farming and chemical production as well as cooking and preserving food.

But it was a growing consumer interest in health foods in the 1970's that spurred sales. Claims that sea salt with minerals can improve certain health conditions prompted the development of a culinary product they call "real salt." Kyle says, "Your salt is from a prehistoric ocean. Where as the sea salts that are coming off the oceans today, they were saying, ‘what about the acid rain, the sewage, the garbage, the radiation.'"

The company has seen profitable sales overseas – much of it tied to those issues of purity.

While culinary salt packaging is important, industrial uses make up the bulk of sales for Redmond. The huge piles of de-icing road salt are 70-percent of the business. Crews work almost around the clock; and during the summer months they step up production trying to get a jump on snow season.

Robert Burns a mill worker says, "Because when it hits, it can hit pretty hard and these truck will be in here almost all the way to Redmond packed in and sometimes waiting two, three, four hours for a load to get out of here."

Workers harvest the salt some 300 feet below the surface in 40 by 80 foot tunnels that twist and turn for three miles. Blasting is a daily occurrence and crews often work in the dark.

Today Kyle Bosshardt carries on a family mining legacy started by his grandfather and uncle. And unlike farmers who see just one crop in the season ahead...Kyle has a different perception of his underground harvest. He says, "Yeah, it will be long past my lifetime before this deposit here is exhausted."