When it rains, it pours

[ezdays]

About five miles south of where we live is a large Morton Salt facility. There's a large elevator moving salt into big piles and there are pallets with bags of salt everywhere. I often wondered why was there a salt processing factory right in the middle of the Arizona desert, and where did they get the salt from since there were no large trucks or any railroad siding there. Recently, I learned that there is a large deposit of salt in the area and they are actively mining it since around 1969. There is some 15 cubic miles of salt there, they say the deposits could be almost two miles deep. There are no open pits or tunnels, but what they do is inject water through the center of double-walled pipes, then pump up the brine through the outer wall to dry in the Arizona sun. This salt is used for water softeners, roads and other industrial uses, but not as table salt.

I know, it's not sensational news, but I thought it was strange to find a salt mine here in the desert, hundreds of miles from either the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific Ocean.