Hutchinson ? Crews working on the planned Kansas Underground Salt Museum have made it through a section of frozen aquifer about 125 feet down, and are continuing progress on what will be a 650-foot elevator shaft.

They are blasting a 14-foot-wide hole, encased mostly within a concrete shell designed to keep groundwater out of the shaft. Chilled brine circulated through pipes buried in the ground froze the groundwater so that Thyssen Mining Construction could drill through the layer of moisture.

Glenn Jacobson, site director, said that at 130 feet deep the miners were now drilling mostly through different layers of shale, both soft and hard.

Crews use an emulsion explosive of pudding-like consistency which is placed in a series of holes to blast six-foot deep sections on each half of the shaft. They’re exploding three to four charges a day.

“It’s the simplest operation you can imagine,” Jacobson said. “You’ve got a shovel and a pail, and you bring the muck up.”

The museum’s executive director, Jay Smith, said $5 million has been raised for the project, 65 percent of its $7.8 million goal. That’s more than enough to pay for the $3.5 million elevator shaft leading to the museum in the Hutchinson Salt Mine, an expense being shared with Underground Vaults and Storage.

However, Smith said, it’s not nearly enough for the rest of the project, which includes a visitor center on the surface and exhibits down in the mine. The museum, about the size of three football fields, will depict the story of salt and its mining from biblical times to the present day.

Hutchinson has an important place in that history. The city is located above one of the world’s largest underground salt deposits, and salt mining has been a part of the local economy for more than a century. More than 300,000 tons of rock salt is still mined from the 67 miles of caverns under the city.

“We’re close, but we need to be much closer to our goal,” Smith said of the fund-raising drive. “We don’t want to be in a position where we have to do most of the financing. That’s how museums get into trouble.”

Neil Johnson, a former director for Westwood Colleges in Denver, has begun work coordinating the campaign. It still hasn’t been determined exactly when the museum would be ready to open, and won’t be until the fund-raising drive gets closer to its goal.