Homestake Gold Mine and Sanford Lab, Lead, South Dakota

We went to the Homestake gold mine in lead South Dakota. This mine was founded in 1876 when the there was a gold rush in the northern Black Hills. The mine finally closed down in 2002 after 125 years of non-stop operation. Then in 2007 the National Science Foundation decided that the abandoned mine would be a perfect place to set up a lab. They proposed the 875 million dollar laboratory to the government as the US’s first national lab in over 20 years. They decided this site would be optimal as opposed to an above ground site because there is minimal interference from things like ultraviolet x-ray and gamma radiation that interfere at a subatomic level with their test results. In essence they were trying to study deeper into space and 4000 feet underground was the easiest way to replicate it. We went on a long tour of the entire place, and our tour guide told us about all of the history in Lead.  We never actually made it to the real laboratory underground, but we did go in the crank house where people would be lifted up and down to the mine shaft to get to work. When it was actually a mine there were no federal regulations on how fast you were actually able to go so you would go up to 25 miles an hour in a little steel cage. Now it is illegal for them to send anybody at above 5 miles an hour, so it takes about 10 minutes for people to get down to the lab. Right outside the crank room there were a lot of the tools that the original miners used. We saw all of the normal things like the drills and mine carts, but we also saw something entirely unexpected, a mine cart with what looked to be a wooden toilet seat on it. We learned that it is actually what miners had to use to go to the bathroom. There would be a chain that held it in place so it wouldn't roll away. The saying, “I'm just yanking your chain,” comes from the old miners. They used to play pranks on people by pulling away the chain while they were doing their business, letting them roll down the mine until they hit a wall.
Next Stop: Devils Tower