Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 124, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1916 — HAS GREATEST SALT MINES [ARTICLE]

HAS GREATEST SALT MINES

Galician Town of Wieliczka Is Built Over Most Wonderful Caverns In World. Wieliczka, in Galicia, is an interesting town, not for what is in It, but for what is under it. The salt mines there are the greatest in the world, .nd the most wonderful. They form what amounts to an underground town, which might have suggested to Jules Verne his underground community in the Children of the Cavern. The Wieliczka salt mlns is two and one-half miles long from east to west and 1,050 yards wide from north to south. It has seven levels, the lowest being nearly a thousand feet deep, and is entered by eleven shafts. The different levels are connected by flights of steps hewn out of the rock salt. In the mine there are chapels, tramways, a railway and railway station, a ballroom (with M regular orchestra) and several other halls, all hewn out of the rock salt with elaborate architectural decoration. For a hundred years the mine has belonged to the Austrian government. It employed a thousand workpeople and turned out 60,000 tons of salt a year. There are 65 miles of pony tramways and 22 miles of railway in the Wieliczka salt mines. All these lines meet in a sort of central railway station, with spacious waiting rooms, offices and an excellent refreshment room all complete, all hewn-out of the rock salt, and looking, according to one description, “more like a summer pavilion than a railway station, with

its latticed galleries and stately pillars gleaming white and iridescent.” This is comparatively modern, of course. The oldest “building” in the mine is the Chapel of St. Anthony, dating from 1691. It contains three altars, a pulpit and much statuary, all elaborately carved out of rock salt. But services are now held only in the more modern but equally elaborate Chapel of St, Cunigund, which is entered down 46 salt steps. The chapel is 50 yards long, 15 yards wide and 30 feet high, and is used regularly for worship. The ballroom is a huge place, where miners’ festivals are often held. A miners’ orchestra plays regularly in this hall not only for the dances, but for the entertainment of visitors, for the mine is one of the wonders of the world and is much visited by tourists. There are other big halls in the mine carved in the same way. The mine has been worked for at least 800 years.