Worlds Largest Underground Salt Mine Under The Great Lakes - Lake Huron, Goderich Ontario
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- čas přidán 28. 12. 2023
- Canada's Great Lakes are some of the largest fresh water bodies in the world. Lurking under them is the world's largest salt mine. We head to Goderich Ontario, where the salt is mined 1800ft below the great lake Huron to explore the area.
The salt was formed over millions of years through heating and evaporation, Goderich Ontario used to be in the southern hemisphere and was quite different than it was today. This formed the Michigan salt basin, which 3 of the 5 lakes make up.
We travel to the docks and mine site to check out the facilities. Then we head to the mechanical evaporator where the salt is extracted from slurry and is then turned into road and table salt. Goderich is a town full of history and industry, and this mine will last for 200 years.
#salt #greatlakes #mining #saltmines #canada #ice
#ontario #industry #undergroundmineexploring #ore #ship #facts #roadtrip #saltmine #worldslargest #industry #worldrecord #trades #ships #car #trades
#lakehuron #history #miningequipment #prospecting
#roadtrip #undergroundmining #underground #lake #winter #lakes #glacier #mineralprocessing #mine - Věda a technologie
You have mixed the two separate extraction methods, the plant on the east of town is the evaporation unit for table salt, the shore mine crushes underground and hoists granulated road salt with skips in two shafts.
Thanks for clarifying!
I live 65 km north of Goderich, and have worked in the mine several times as a union contractor (Ironworker/welder). It’s such a huge underground labyrinth of tunnels down there. Unless you’re a mine employee, you need a mine worker with you so you don’t get lost down there. It stays a constant 18 or 19 degrees Celsius no matter what temperature it is on the surface 1800 feet above. So awesome down there!!🇨🇦👍🏻👍🏻
I’ve done some union ironwork down there too. No interest in going back. On one shutdown there were at least 3 major safety incidents. The mining act is whack, bro!
I still have a map of the mine as a memento
Wow, what a great trip down memory lane. My parents lived in Goderich when I was earning my BSc majoring in geology at Western. Dad a CNR inspector was able to arrange a tour of the salt mine in 1981 or 82. It was an amazing experience and I can still recall the taste the salt in the air in the mine. I only have excellent memories of Goderich. Thank you so much for the video and the memories.😀👍
I didn’t know these mines were that big. With the amount of salt we use on our roads it’s a wonder the lakes aren’t salt water again.
I once visited the salt mines in the Finger Lakes region of New York State (Watkins Glen and Ithaca). They have been mining salt there for over 200 years. I used to work receiving 200 tons a day at American Cyanamid in Niagara Falls, Canada to produce Sodium Cyanide. Sodium Cyanide is a refining agent in gold mining.
If you ever get the chance, visit the salt mine near Krakow, Poland, which started during the 13th century, I believe. Amazing place!
I've lived in Southern Ontario my whole life and never knew anything about this mine. That deserves a sub and a like for sure.
Did you live under a rock??? How you never hear of the salt mines in goderich???? Seriously??
@@user-ru8ks2zx7edude relax, not everyone knows everything about the area around them. Lived in the niagara region most my life and never knew about it either till I started mining in sudbury.
I grew up east ofToronto in Port Hope and never heard of the Goderich salt mine until I visited Goderich one day for lunch not so very long ago. We do not toot our horn enough about cool places like this. I only knew of Goderich because a girl I lived with in residence at McMaster was from there. She never talked about the salt mine ever.
@catiecreighton669 you are right.....we definitely need to toot our horn more about the cool places. Only problem with that is, then everyone knows and the cool goes away because of too many ppl....case in point...Sauble Beach and the whole northern bruce peninsula. Over run with tourists/vacationers and now for all those who have enjoyed these places for yrs and yrs before now avoid these places because of all the visitors. You now have to make reservations to walk trails and visit beaches.
@@user-ru8ks2zx7e So true. I live under the escarpment in the Dundas area and all of the waterfalls snd adjoining parks are now all by appointments only. No more just driving up to Webster’s Falls and having a nice picnic on a Sunday afternoon and walking in the water.
To be clear - They do utilize "rock bolts" as well as "cable bolts" drilled into the back to secure the excavated workings. But they don't utilize mesh like a traditional hard rock mine would. That said, great video and very informative!
For real? Thats interesting. They just bolt it and put a plate on but no screening.
When I lived in southern Ontario, I use to visit Goderich in the fall to go fishing. It is a nice city and really good fishing for salmon and steelheads, as well other other fish species. Goderich really is a town where you can bring your family, go fishing, have a nice picnic and enjoy the day. Thanks for the vid, it was interesting to watch.
Great video. I worked here for a few years. Small correction, they don't bring salt to the surface as a dissolved brine. That method of extraction was originally used when the mine was first opened in the 1800s, but I don't think it's been used in the last century. It's brought to the surface as a crushed granular solid through a mechanical skip (elevator for bulk materials). Also interesting to note, because of the limited space on the surface the majority of the equipment, such as crushers, are found underground.
Forty years ago, when I was pursuing a degree in geology, I toured what then was the world's largest salt mine, the Retsof mine in Retsof, NY. They used a wide-column stoping technique to prevent collapse, but after many years the good salt was running out, so they decided to mine what they could out of the columns. Of course, eventually the roof collapsed, and water from one of the minor finger lakes around there flooded the mine, and it was abandoned.
The created another mine just east of the Retsof mine, though, and that is still being worked today.
What happened if anything to the salinity of the finger lake after the collapse at Retsof? I live on Cayuga Lake and we have a large salt mine that extends under the lake. If any part collapsed and water flooded the mine, I'm wondering what the result may be to the ecosystem.
WHICH finger lake are you talking about? The nearest finger lake to the Retsof mine was MILES away. Salt has been a natural part of 'the ecosystem' in the finger lakes region for literally 200 million years. Water leaking in to a mine won't make one iota of difference, since it will still be separated from the lake water by at least 100' of bedrock. You get more salt in the lake water from winter runoff from the roads near each lake. BTW, Retsof merely flooded; it never 'collapsed'. Don't be such a Chicken Little.
@@alexclement7221 Chicken Little? I assumed you were talking about a mine under one of the smaller finger lakes collapsing. If there was a large enough opening to a lake I would assume some mixing of the brine in the mine with the lake depending on how large the hole was. Yes, road salt isn't too good for the environment, but the salt deposits laid down when an ocean covered the area are normally separated from the lakes by rock, and not directly exposed to lake water. I asked a legit question and you did say the mine roof collapsed. "Of course, eventually the roof collapsed". So what would happen if the Cargill mine on Cayuga were to collapse with an opening say 100 ft wide? You're saying it would have zero impact on the lake?
This is my hometown! Love seeing videos on youtube of its history!
Great quality Videos, keep up the great work sharing history!
Thank you!
I worked at an air service from 1990 to 1998. It was owned by Goderich Elevators. I loved living and working there except sometimes in the winter there used be some pretty nasty snow streamers off of Lake Huron.
Hauled salt out of here for years. CARGILL has this game on lock
Very interesting. Thanks for the video!
Nice one. There is/was also a salt mine near Windsor/Detroit. Time for a trim!
it's still operating
I was on a tour down there riding along comfortably in a school bus with all my other tour mates. Oh and BTW that school bus came down in the same elevator you came down in........in small pieces and then reassembled down under. All the graders and loaders etc came down the same way - in little pieces.
Great video
There's salt mines under Detroit and Delray and near by areas it's under the Rouge River also. It's called the International Salt Mines
There's a salt mine under Windsor, Ontario as well.
Windsor Salt - as the name implies - Have several friends that are miners there - I had a tour years ago - simply amazing @@thelmarose2782
I live more near the golden horseshoe, but I'm fascinated by the geology of Ontario. There's such a rich geology from the rocks in Tobermory that are among the oldest in the world, to the Canadian shield, to the impact cratery in Sudbury, and my favourite, the great lakes and Niagara escarptment, and basically all of the rock that's been carved up by retreating glaciers 12,000 years ago. It's amazing to think there were civilizations that existed before the Great Lakes formed fully. We tend to think of huge formations as taking millions, not thousands of years to form.
The largest salt deposit in Canada is under western Canada (including the NW territories, AB, SK, and MB) with an estimated 100 quadrillion tonnes over 300,000 sq.kms. The Michigan basin has at least 30 quadrillion tonnes itself. A lot more salt also under Quebec and the maritimes. We have access to much more salt than we will ever need to mine.
I love the irony that one of Earth's largest deposits of fresh water has one of the largest deposits of salt underneath it, lol
Random thought, if the mine ever broke through the bottom of the lake could it contaminate the lake and make it brackish?
this happened in Louisiana, the entire lake drained into it very quickly, dragging several barges down with it.
@@zarroth Thankfully, lake Huron is freakin' huge. It probably wouldn't make a dent lol.
Where the mine is the water only gets about 40-50 ft deep at most. So with the mine being 1800ft down it seems very unlikely
This is due to the Great Flood 4,400 years ago.
Great work.
Interesting!!!! 🤗🤗
This was an interesting video.
Awesome! I never knew about this. Thanks!
There is a Diamond Crystal salt mine in St Clair MI south of Port Huron. Many years ago we followed workers below ground at shift change, got some looks but nobody said anything. We went down pretty deep but didn't get to the mine area and figured its time to leave.
My wife and I lived in Goderich for 15 years - moved to Owen Sound in 2019. A man in my church there told me there are over 200 km of roadways under the lake created by mining salt. Interesting fact - heavy equipment is disassembled and taken below to the mine floor where it is reassembled. Once it is worn out it is "parked" in the recesses of a horizontal shaft and left.
Heh, I used to live in Owen Sound once upon a time. Have they built a bridge across the bay yet? Or tunnel? LOL. I'll never forget the amazing scenery. I lived in the edge of town , just 2 blocks from a nice lookout on the bayshore (near 28th and 3rd). I used to go out at night and watch storms over the water in the summer. Or in the winter, I actually managed to see the northern lights. First and only time. There was no color to them. It just looked like fast moving clouds, or smoke. But I'll never forget it. Or one day after an ice storm and it was -40 (with windchill). I decided to walk down to the water just to see what that kind of cold feels like. When I got to the lookout, the water wasn't frozen yet. So, there were MASSIVE amounts of steam pouring off of the entire bay as far as you could see. It looked like the entire bay was boiling.
This was when flip phones were the norm, so I didn't get any of it on film. But like I said, I'm never going to forget any of it. And I didn't drive, so I didn't get a chance to go see the sights outside of the city. There's supposedly a witch's grave in the area. And countless hidden nature gems, I'm sure. I would have so loved to explore the area in a car. Maybe I'll go back one day just for old time's sake.
I had to move, because living in that sparsely populated an area without a car just isn't feasible. I actually had to move to Owen Sound from Chesley, if you're familiar. There was even less work there, so I was hoping Owen Sound would be better. Which it was. I made a decent living until my company imploded, as they do. Good times.
Yeah people underestimate how big mines get, sudbury alone has over 1000km of drifts (horizontal tunneling) through it.
Nice video!
Nice job. great video.
Very interesting. Good content!👍
Good video but we send rock salt to surface. There is an evaporation plant in goderich that pumps water under ground and get salt that way. It is at a salt seam above us. Rest was good .
The Great Lakes were formed mostly due to the mid-continent rift (which failed), the glaciers just helped out.
Good video. thanks
Great narrating and great video, born in Michigan, now live in TX.
They have salt works in manistee michigan on the west coast of michigan too.
Glad to see some Canadian content Goderich used to be the home of Champion graders later bought by Volvo and relocated to (I believe) North Carolina. Hope you do a feature on Petrolia and Oil Springs and visit the Oil Museum of Canada. Petrolia after all saved the whales and with the help of Ford and others got the horse crap off the streets of major cities. Yes the ICE engine was the cleaner alternative. We were also the first to frack and at one time had 3 nitro glycerine plants which subsequently all blew up. There is a large salt mine near Geneseo NY which claims to be the largest (Americans ffs) and I was of the understanding that they were working the same salt formation but my memory fails on that one.
@edfrawley4356 I have a video on the oil museum of Canada. Thanks for your insights!
czcams.com/video/hxFg_WMCfno/video.htmlsi=V9ddcF60XI3MQ5cy
The first drilled oil well in North America was in Petrolia,Ontario
Volvo relocated to Shippensburg Pennsylvania, they were unable to build the grader due to no skilled workers available for the wage offered and ceased production.
@@Jamie1975758We can thank NAFTA for this. I recall GM Diesel of London Ontario, an excellent employer for the area. GM sold this plant to Caterpillar who continued to run the plant for a number of years until one collective bargaining negotiation where they offered a significant drop in salary which the union and its employees soundly rejected. As I recall, a plant in Indiana picked up the production at the much reduced salaries. If I was PM at the time, I would have made any sale of Caterpillar products in Canada extremely difficult. Caterpillar is only one of many such stories that decimated good manufacturing jobs in Southern Ontario. Don’t even get me started on the Pulp and Paper and the forest products sector in northern Ontario due to NAFTA. American big business plays a zero sum game and for them it as akin to “taking candy from a baby”.
Been in that mine. Field trip in University. I remember how dry my eyes were. Also the layers showing a lot evaporation and inundation.
I live in Godrich and recently got to tour all the way underground
So you can actually go on a tour down there?
Thats interesting, wonder what the air was like to breathe as a result of all the salt. Also interesting that they give tours on an open working mine
I'm from kincardine and in the 1800 hundreds they mined salt there also
our house was built on one of the original salt well s
there was a well under our back porch and as kids we were never suppose to go there it was 980 feet deep !
we use to take the lid off it and drop rocks down it
it took forever to hear the splash !
What it was was hydraulic mining they pumped hot water down in the ground on one side of the harbour It dissolved the salt and pumped ithe brine out on the other sideof the harbour (our house)
They had drying pans where the tennis courts are today to evaporate the water to get the salt
At its peak they were shipping out 70 tons of salt a day by sail boat
I didn't realize it as a kid but under the whole harbour area of kincardine is a vast honey comb filled with water and could collapse ?
At goderich I have been on
Fish tugs 5 miles out in the lake and heard the vibration thru the hull of them working under ground
When they dig the salt at goderich they don't melt it under ground they sent it up in the fast moving buckets in your video
There might of been hydraulic mining at goderich also in the 1800s
Melting the salt today might be part of a purification process for human consumption
The kincardine salt company was bought out by windsor salt and they shut it down
Good day from Kitchener Waterloo area So how did they dig this well? Thanks
@@donvoll2580
Good point ! there are photos of the salt wells in the history books of kincardine our house is in the pictures it looks like a oil drilling tower I will look further into it and get back to you
the pictures from the 1800s show the salt works going an entire block not only was there the well at our house there were several other wells as well
Have a great day !
@@donvoll2580
Hi guy I looked up in the history book of kincardine there were 3 different salt company's in the 1800s
They drilled the holes
here is a quote from the book
The first salt bed was struck at 920 feet which was found to be 30 feet in thickness below this the bore passed thru 20 feet of rock then 22 feet through the second bed of salt
The evaporating pan is191 by 28 feet and has a capacity of 70 tons a day
14 men employed Forman $2 per day six rakers $1.15 per day two furnace men $1.50 two engineers at $1.12 two packers at 2 cents per barrel esrning $1.50 per day in summer and $1.25 in winter and one laborer at $ 1.12 per day
Fuel used soft coal about 20 tons a day $ 2.00 per ton
Have a great day !
@@carllafrance5510 Yea If u can, boy 900 ft is extremely deep Thanks
My wife has a friend living up there.
I read a story in the last few years that some people wanted to store spent nuclear fuel down there.
Since there are siesmic faults in that area, that would be a remarkably BAD idea.
1. Not in the mine
2. I'm a local, lived here over 60 years and am not aware of any seimic faults.
I work underground in northern Ontario. It’s quite the experience being a couple thousand feet below surface .
Yeah same, it always trips me out trying to think where I'd be if I went durectly to surface from there.
Nice job. On the salt mines
I live in Winona on Lake Ontario. For some reason, and I was always puzzled by it, was once called Saltfleet. It's on our land survey. I assumed it was a mining town at one point.
There is or was a salt mine in Detroit. Like this video built out of salt everything used has to be sent down in pieces. Nothing as far as equipment will ever leave. I went on a tour have a chunk of Salt from the mine.
Do you look for sasquatch too ?
5:55 Petrolia !
Welcome to Godrich Canada. They had a bad tornado about ten yrs ago. Hope the town square is still nice
They are replacing the damaged buildings with replicas of the original. Beautiful little town. Spend three days there this fall.
I’ve been going to Goderich since I was little. I know exactly where that evaporator plant is. Not sure if it’s still there at the end of East St or if the last tornado picked it up but there used to be a big rail plow stored on a siding there. When I was a kid there used to be a rotary blower there too
The plant is still there and going strong.
The cycles of heat and cold sounds like we should all be nomads. What a great life that would be eh?
It would be interesting to know how far out under the lake the mine goes.And Theoretically it could go west to the point of meeting salt mines on the US side.
There is no salt mine on the US side
@@wmurray23 I thought there was one in Detroit area and Ohio out under Lake Erie
Detroit mine is no place near this mine. This mine is north of port Huron on the American side, no salt mine that far north
@@wmurray23 yeah I must have conflated the video with another one (Detroit/Windsor (Other ones) (separate videos)
Over 20 years ago they said the mine was halfway between Godrich and Port Huron. There was a Champion motor grader in the mine. If they ever brought it to the surface it would rust.
my brother used to work there
Can you imagine being down in that hole? No way man.
It’s fun :p 😂
The next mine is in Windsor/ Detroit area. Dealt with them to
Love Goderich, great town.
That enclosed pillar of salt is actually Lot's wife!
Just kidding.
I’ve worked in that mine. If you ever go down there, beware the CHUDS!!
You are confusing the mine with the evaporator plant. Course road salt is brought to the surface after running through a crusher. Fine salt is produced at the evaporator plant at a completely different location in the eastern part of town. Salt brine is pumped to the surface and evaporated. All bagging is done at the evap. plant, so some rock salt is trucked up from the mine but the vast majority of it goes out in bulk by ship, rail or truck.
Thanks for clarifying!
Good interesting info. Skip the dueling banjos
Don't you think if they remove all that support underneath a lake it would collapse?
Do you think they care when there is money to be made? It's all good don't worry everything will be fine trust us.
Just wait... it'll close down too... cheaper to extract in Bangladesh or some places...
Are there humans working in the mine? How much energy, and what type is used to evaporate the slurry into dry salt?
So when somebody screws up and the Lake drains into the salt mines say Goodbye to the fresh water .
if that salt mine leaks into the great lakes ..... or in someway collapses into it , it will be the Great Salt lakes
Very very cool! And all these years I thought Windsor was the big salt mine in Ontario. Up in Ottawa most of the salt in the stores I shop in is Windsor salt. Good to know that Sifto is also Canadian. Very cool town too. Will have to roadtrip there some time
Every lake is a salt lake at the bottom.
lets hope they dont poke a hole in that mine .... last time that happened the lake disappeared ...
Bro, I think we went to high-school together.
Now we know why our cars don’t last very long. Salt rusts steel. Millions of tons of salt on Ontario highways each year.
I thought cars were mostly plastic these days?
Wait a minute.... ( at 4:28 ) so your saying global warming, climate change is a natural occurring cycle?...... hmmmm imagine that.
It would be nice to get a bunch of climate change fanatics and explain to them how that salt deposit was formed over time.
You mentioned the cooling and warming cycles of the Planet. Wery well done.
When the lake drains away into the mine one day. Ill laugh at the loss ofhalfthe fresh water in the world
Get your facts straight...the mine makes road salt...the evaporator plant uses brine (water and salt mixed)which it pumps out of the earth near the plant to evaporate the water for table salt...would of been a good video if yout facts were correct.
There is no salt mine under Lake Michigan
This is a great video just get rid of the stupid frigin music wtf
This sounds like a major catastrophe waiting to happen!
6:57-- God bless those men that gave their lives so my potato chips were seasoned.
That part of the continent was in the southern hemisphere? I call bullshit on that. Weren't the Great Lakes created by the Ice age? that would be long after continental drift. So there were no Great Lakes if it had been in the Southern Hemisphere.
This was not an ocean.
Forget the millions of years Bro- the salt was the catastrophic result of Noah's Flood! Dangerous to call God liar :)
How American is it to make false claims of having the world's largest salt mine. Lol.
The largest is under Windsor and LaSalle Ontario Canada. They have been mining for atleast 50 years and they still mining.
Leave the salt allown salt will kill the fish and don't laugh at what I'm saying if you dig what will happen in the evorment
Lol
What do you do, just narate other people's videos?
⚛️🩷🎼🔥🔥💕🪷🕉️
Do you know about ley lines ?
Oil is not the problem.
It is Salt. ⚛️