Hutchinson ? The junior college basketball tournament in Hutchinson last week helped the two-year-old Kansas Underground Salt Museum set an attendance record.

From March 17 through March 22, almost 3,000 people toured the museum 650 feet underground.

That’s 500 more than attendance during last year’s National Junior College Athletic Association tournament.

Museum operations director Gayle Ferrell said it’s encouraging that 2009 numbers were 20 percent higher than those in 2008, given the nation’s economic crisis.

She also noted brisk sales of combination admission tickets to the salt museum and to the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Museum.

The salt mines and museum in Hutchinson were the subject of a multimedia package by the Journal-World, available online at LJWorld.com.