Homestake Mine (and underground laboratory)

The Homestake Mine is a deep underground gold mine located near Lead, South Dakota. Until it closed in 2002 it was the largest and deepest gold mine in North America, producing more than $1 billion in gold. The Homestake Mine is famous in scientific circles for being the site at which the solar neutrino problem was first discovered. This became known as the Homestake Experiment. The deep underground laboratory was set up by Raymond Davis Jr. in the mid 1960s to become the first experiment to observe solar neutrinos.

On July 10, 2007, the mine was selected by the National Science Foundation as the location for the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL), winning out over several candidates including the Henderson Mine near Empire, Colorado. If completed, the DUSEL facility will continue the early work on ultra-low-background experiments on dark matter and neutrinos, as well as providing a site for biology, geology, and mining research.