Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 79, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 June 1901 — SINKING INTO A SALT LAKE. [ARTICLE]

SINKING INTO A SALT LAKE.

English Town Is Being Engulfed in a Subterranean Abyss. The Pennsylvania coal region Is not the ofcly part of the world in which towns are being undermined and where houses topple from their and disappear from sight as if swallowed up by an earthquake. England has at least one parallel, for Northwich, the center of the salt industry of the country, is slowly, but surely, sinking beneath the surface of the earth. The product of the salt mines of Nortbwich Is obtained by two methods —quarrying and brine-pumping. In the former case which is the method generally adopted, a shaft is sunk about 300 feet and the salt rock blasted and excavated in the usual manner. The brine-pumping, although it is still continued upon a large scale, is gradually falling into disuse. When the industry was started It was considered that only one stratum of salt existed, and that was only a few feet below the surface. Fresh-water found its way to this extensive salt deposit, with the result that the salt dissolved like snow. A huge subterranean lake of water, charged with 26 per cent of salt, was thus formed. Pumping engines were then Installed to convey this brine to the surface to large? evaporating pans, in which a heavy deposit of salt was left after the water had evaporated. The result of this extensive pumping is that Northwich now rests, as it were, upon a shell of earth, which at times proves insufficient to support the weight of the houses, with the inevitable consequence that the buildings are constantly sliding and collapsing in every direction. As the result of a subsidence one building fell over upon Its back in the course of a single night, and it is noteworthy that the house, owing to the care observed in its construction, fell over intact, not a crack being produced in the walls nor even a pane of glass being broken. There Is scarcely a perpendicular wall to be seen in the town; in numerous cases the doors and window frames of the houses are awry; the roads are extremely uneven, and are often closed, owing to the falling in of portions. Houses are being continually condemned as unsafe for human habitation and demolished. In some cases the sinking is very gradual, while in others it is unexpected and instantaneous. One of the principal thoroughfares took forty years to sink fifteen feet, while another grew appreciably wider every day. Examination proved that one side of the street was slipping completely away. The shop of a dry goods merchant sank one-fifth of its height In ten years, and in the subsequent seven years subsided another fifth. Several houses may be seen, the windows of the ground floor of which are level with the roadway.