Salt is essential for life and has been valued by humankind through out the millennia. Salt is one of the most important things to be bartered in human history. This is why we have the saying that a person is "worth his salt". Even to this day salt is a valuable commodity and industry.
    Some 400 million years ago, an inland sea deposited a vast expanse of salt that formed beds under much of what is today known as the state of Michigan. These salt deposits became underground salt beds as the ancient seas receded and evaporated.
    Long before the European settlers found salt in Michigan, the Native Americans would extract it from salt springs. In 1895 rock salt deposits in Michigan were officially discovered. However, being so far underground, it was too expensive and dangerous to be mined at that time. During the logging period, salt wells were often drilled next to lumber mills, and salt was pumped up from the ground as brine with the use of the mill power.
    The earliest attempts to mine salt near Detroit caused the Detroit Salt and Manufacturing Company to become bankrupt. However, the 1,060-foot deep shaft was completed in 1910. Everything needed for mining had to be lowered into the mine never to come back up to the light of day. This included beasts of burden so the mules used in the mine stayed there until they died.
    By 1914, the Detroit mine produced some 8,000 tons of salt per month. The salt from the mine was used mainly for leather production and food processing. The use of electric locomotives and mechanical shovels increased the Detroit mine to greater productivity. A second tunnel created in 1922 could allow for larger equipment and faster retrieval of the salt brought up. Heavy equipment was lowered down piece by piece and then reassembled in a machine shop in the mine. Like the mules, once lowered into the mine the machinery was there to stay.
    Today the Detroit salt mines are located 1,200 feet beneath Allen Park, Dearborn's Rouge complex, and most of Melvindale. It contains around 100 miles of underground roads and covers about 1,500 acres. The salt is extracted using the "room and pillar" method, where half of the salt is removed, with the other half left behind as pillars that keep the mine from collapsing. First, the miners cut a large slice between the floor and a desired section of salt. Then they blast out some 900 tons of salt in about three seconds. After crushing the rock salt, a long conveyor belt moves the salt to the hoisting shaft, where it is lifted out in ten-ton loads.
    In 1983, International Salt closed the mine's operations. Then two years later Crystal Mines purchased the mine as an underground storage site. In 1997 the Detroit Salt Company purchased the mine and started salt production again in 1998. Salt for road deicing is the only current product produced by the mine today. The Detroit Salt Mine is considered the safest, most modern, and most efficient mine in the world.
    The Kissner Group purchased the mine and the Detroit Salt Company In 2010. Today, the two companies provide North America with ice-melting products that contain rock salt as a primary ingredient. Although there used to be guided tours of the mine, it is currently closed to the public. It must be like a living museum down in the salt mines and it's truly a shame to keep this city of salt hidden below Detroit away from the public view. Comment about this article on the Epress Forum Board .

    Kitch-iti-kipi, The Big Spring, is Michigan's largest freshwater spring. It is two hundred feet across, and 40 feet deep with over 10,000 gallons a minute rushing out from openings in the limestone at its bottom. Its cold water maintains a constant temperature of 45 degrees Fahrenheit year around.
    Visitors can travel across the sinkhole spring by pulling an observation raft using a hand rope from a dock to the other side. Below the surface are ancient tree trunks, lime-encrusted branches, and trout swimming far below the surface. At the bottom, there are clouds of sand kept in motion by the upwelling waters.
    There are several romantic Native American legends attributed to the spring, but they were the creative fiction of John Bellaire, the man who sold the spring to the state of Michigan to become a park. In the early 1920s, Bellaire owned a Five and Dime store in Manistique. He found the springs overgrown with brush and littered with trash dumped by a nearby logging camp. Although the spring was in such bad shape, Bellaire could see the beauty of its emerald-green waters and purchased the 90 acres surrounding the spring.
    Bellaire could have kept the property for himself, but he had wanted to share it with the world by preserving it as a park for the public. In 1926 Bellaire arranged for the sale of the 90 acres that held the Big Spring to the State of Michigan for a mere ten dollars. The deed provided for the property to be forever used as a public park, and to be named Palms Book State Park. Additional lands purchased through tax delinquency and a land exchange program eventually brought the total acreage of the park to 308.
    The Civilian Conservation Corps constructed a raft, dock, concession stand, and ranger's quarters. After being made into the Palms Book State Park, they kept Bellaire as a tour guide to show tourists the bubbling pool. In 1948, Bellaire confessed that he and a poet friend made up the Indian legends of Big Springs to attract visitors. Bellaire was already in his middle 70s at that time but still visited the pool almost daily.
    The legend of Kitch-iti-kipi is said to be about a young Indian chief who loved a girl from his tribe and told her he desired her above all the other maidens. As a test of his love, she told him that he must paddle his canoe across the Big Spring and catch her in his canoe when she leaped from an overhanging tree. As he traveled across, his canoe capsized and he drowned in the icy waters. All the while she stayed in the village laughing about how he believed she would be there to jump into his canoe. According to this legend, the Spring was named Kitch-iti-kipi in memory of the young chief who went to his death in the icy waters in an attempt to win the true love that never loved him in return.
    Chippewa legends tell of parents who came to the pool seeking names for their newborn babies. They would hear names in the sounds of the rippling water. They also attributed healing powers to the waters. Kitch-iti-kipi is said to have many meanings in the Chippewa language including The Great Water, The Blue Sky I See, The Bubbling Spring, and the Sound of Thunder and Drums. It seems certain that such a beautiful and mysterious spring would have magical Native American legends surrounding it. Based on research into the regional legends it was likely a highly sacred spot and a home for a spirit known as a Kitchi-Manitou (good spirit), Matchi-Manitou (bad spirit), or the powerful underworld being called Mishipeshu translated as the Great Lynx or Underwater Panther. Comment about this article on the Epress Forum Board .