THE SANTA FE ROUTE. 27 
From a point near Halstead a branch line runs to Sedgwick, con- 
necting there with the line from Newton to Wichita 
Halstead. and beyond.. 
-oattrwn ae feet. At Burrton (see sheet 4, p. 30) the Santa Fe line 
ansas City 210 miles, 1S crossed by a branch of the St. Louis & San Fran- 
cisco Railroad (‘‘Frisco”’ line) running from Wichita 
to Ellsworth. South of Burrton are wide smooth plains extending 
to Arkansas River and forming part of the buried valley referred to 
above. A short distance north of Burrton is a range 
Burrton. of sand dunes—low, irregular hills composed of loose 
oe pe feet. sand which the wind has blown out of the flats along 
Kansas City 219 miles. ATkansas River. These sand dunes extend north- 
westward for some distance past Hutchinson, not far 
north of the Santa Fe Railway. Burrton was named for I. T. Burr, 
a former vice president of the railway company. 
Hutchinson, the third largest city in Kansas, is attractively laid 
out, with wide streets, most of which are bordered by several rows 
-of shade trees and extensive grassy parking. It was 
Hutchinson. named for C: C. Hutchinson, its founder. The greater 
ee ae sige part of the city is on the north side of Arkansas River, 
oe case ie but a portion known as South Hutchinson is on the 
south side. This river, called the Nepesta by the 
Spanish explorers, is one of the largest branches ofthe Mississippi, 
to which it carries an average of 200,000,000° cubic feet of water a 
day. It rises in the Rocky Mountains, in central Colorado. At 
Hutchinson the river valley is about 8 miles wide and is a broad 
expanse of nearly level land underlain by a thick body of sand and 
gravel that was deposited by the river and contains a large amount 
a water. Below this river deposit are shales containing thick deposits 
of salt. This mineral is extensively worked by several plants in 
Hutchinson, one of which is the largest in the world. They produce 
not only salt, but soda ash, caustic soda, and other chemicals manu- 
factured from salt. The salt is obtained from borings about 800 
feet deep, containing an outer casing down which water is forced 
and an inner casing up which this water, saturated with salt from the - 
beds below, is pumped into tanks for evaporation. The production 
of salt at this place averages 2,000 barrels a da 
The salt occurs in beds about 380 feet thick (depth 430 to 810 feet) 
in the midst of red and gray shales of Permian age (see table, p. ii), 
where it was deposited long ago by thé continued evaporation of 
extensive bodies of sea water. These great salt beds may reach 
far to the west and they underlie a large area extending southward 
to the Oklahoma line, but they appear to thin out toward the north 
and east. They are worked at several other places, notably at Lyons, 
* 25 miles northwest of Hutchinson, where they are penetrated by 
