“Some 1,200 feet beneath the streets of Detroit, under the north end of Allen Park, Dearborn’s Rouge complex and most of Melvindale, runs 100 miles of subterranean roads over an area of more than 1,500 acres. It is the Detroit Salt Mine and as a Detroit industry it is older then automobiles. As a geological entity, this salt deposit is older even than the dinosaurs.” (Via Atlas Obscura)

According to John D. Nystuen at the University of Michigan, “The Detroit salt mine was started 1906 and finally closed operations in 1985 after millions of tons of salt had been removed. The work created extensive man-made caverns under the city that remain today. The Detroit mine has a rather complex shape that is intriguing to geographers and that calls for some explanation.” The map below shows the complex shape of the mine.

I highly recommend reading all of Metropolitan Mining: Institutional and Scale Effects on the Salt Mines of Detroit, which gives a good history to an industry unknown to most people. Whether it’s salt mining, underground transportation or public space, I’m fascinated with subterranean activity. In fact, these salt mines remind me a lot of a recent post of mine on speleotherapy - the therapeutic use of salt mines, caves or other forms of exposure to salt air. 

A vast portion of the modern landscape provides little or no access to food that is needed to maintain a healthy diet. These food deserts are a serious problem for public officials, public health researchers, and city planners. 

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In Retail Concentration, Food Deserts, and Food Disadvantaged Communities, a report by Troy C. Blanchard [Mississippi State University] and Thomas A. Lyson [Cornell University], the authors lay out finding of a number of interesting trends regarding food deserts in the U.S. For example:

A central finding for our study was that food deserts contain a higher number of small grocery and convenience stores. Because these stores often sell lower quality groceries at higher process, food desert residents must travel long distances to access the quality, low priced groceries at a supermarket or supercenter. Additionally, food deserts are less likely to have fruit and vegetable markets (farmer’s markets).

So not surprisingly, food desert most usually contain a higher percentage of impoverished populations, lower median family incomes, a less educated population, and higher rates of unemployment. 

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In response to Troy Blanchard’s findings, FoodMapping Blog notes that, 

According to their figures, 803 of United States counties, or 26%, have low access to food, while 401, or 13%, are food deserts. They found that residents of low-access and food desert counties are more likely to lack a high school diploma or GED, have a lower family income, have higher individual and family poverty rates, and have a population which is older than average. In four food desert counties in Iowa that they focused on more closely, the researchers found that 64% did not consume adequate amounts of vegetables daily, while 45% did not consume adequate fruit, 34% lacked adequate dairy and 30% lacked adequate protein.

While the problem is visible in both urban and rural areas, a look at non-metropolitan counties with “low access” to a large food retailer” (50+ employee grocery store) reveals a greater number of rural counties in the south and south east with low access. 

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“The food desert is not one single problem with one single solution,” says Mari Gallagher or the National Center for Public Research. In her research of Chicago food deserts, she notes one clear strategy, developing new stores, could have broad impact on Chicago’s food access. That’s why the Chicago Grocer Expo project recently identified six priority sites, many city-owned and vacant, on the South and West sides of Chicago best suited for new food stores.  According to Chicago Magazine, ”Unfortunately, the group released its list in September 2008, just in time for the economy’s free fall.” Molly Sullivan of the Chicago Department of Community Development says that while the city has held preliminary discussions with retailers regarding the targeted locations and has appointed its own task force to streamline the process for launching new stores, no lease has been signed on any of the six sites.

DRY CELLS: The three largest clusters in Chicago’s food desert: (1) from Austin in the west to the Near North Side in the east; (2) from the Near South Side in the north to Ashburn and Greater Grand Crossing in the south; (3) most of the Far South Side, including Roseland and Pullman
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According to Chicago Magazine, “Some Chicagoans aren’t waiting for grocery stores to come to the rescue. The nonprofit God’s Gang, started in the 1970s by residents of Grand Boulevard, a neighborhood classified in part today as a food desert, provides training in urban agriculture to fellow citizens.” According to the Chicago Magazine article, last year at least three underserved communities launched farmers’ markets.

All over the Chicago citizens are putting spare land to use, planting strawberries and tomatoes in backyards and side lots. In several neighborhoods, Growing Home, a nonprofit, hosts weekly farm-stand hours at its urban garden, giving people the chance to buy fresh vegetables. What is happening in Chicago is echoed all over the country. Farmers Markets are all the rage and many community gardens have become a hot issue from the White House down. Hopefully this will be a sustained response to food deserts. 

I took a hike around the trails of Western Eno River State Park [36°4′24″N 78°56′3″W]. The Eno River, named for the Eno Indians who once lived along its banks, is the initial tributary of the Neuse River in North Carolina. Here are a few images from my walk. 

A hike around Jordan Lake proved to be more interesting than I thought. Jordan Lake is a reservoir located west of Raleigh and south of Chapel Hill in Chatham County, North Carolina. The reservoir was developed and is managed by the US Army Corps of Engineers, which dammed and flooded the Haw River and New Hope River between 1973 and 1983 as part of a flood control project prompted by a particularly damaging tropical storm that hit the region downstream in September 1945.

The majority of Jordan Lake (35°45′0″N 79°1′30″W) lies within the western margin of the Durham Triassic Basin, formed by a down faulting of relatively recent age sedimentary formations into much older igneous formations, both of which were then subjected to erosion. According to the NC Division of Parks and Recreation:

This fault generally runs north-south along the western portion of the project. The lake area is underlaid predominately by Upper Triassic Age formations of reddish-brown conglomerates and red-to-purple sandstones. These rock formations are fractured by many joints, faults, and diabase dikes. A few small portions of the lake extend into the older crystalline igneous rock. These areas are underlaid by rock of the Carolina Slate Belt Series, Pre-Cambrian, or Lower Paleozoic Period.

More information on the New Hope River Valley from the NC Division of Parks and Recreation:

The New Hope River Valley, now home to the corporate world of Research Triangle Park, has been the site of a broad range of cultures for more than 10,000 years. Archaeologists have explored the remains of 450 prehistoric and historic sites in the area and have uncovered many Native American artifacts. The land was settled by Scottish Highlanders in the 1740s, and it saw action in both the Revolutionary and Civil wars.