On July 10th, 2007, the National Science Foundation selected the former Homestake Gold Mine in Lead as the site for the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory.
The formal process of reassigning the mission of the mine started a year earlier when Governor Mike Rounds signed papers transferring ownership of the mine from Barrick Gold to the State of South Dakota. The site now operates as the Sanford Underground Research Facility also known as the SUIRF.
The research facility houses world-class physics experiments and the site provides significant depth and rock stability—a near-perfect environment for experiments that need to be shielded from the bombardment of cosmic radiation.
But even before Homestake ended its 126-year run as North America's largest and deepest gold mine, scientific research was underway. In the mid-1960s, Dr. Ray Davis, a chemist from Brookhaven National Lab, began building his solar neutrino experiment on the 4850 Level of the mine. The work earned Davis the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2002. The National Science Foundation took note and planning began for the renovation that would be needed to transition the property to a research center.
Steps along the way included forming the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority. The new agency committed 40 million dollars with an additional $70 million from T. Denny Sanford. Although the facility would not be formally dedicated and operational for another couple of years, it was on this date in 2007, the National Science Foundation picked the former Homestake Gold Mine in Lead as the site for the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory.
Production help is provided by Brad Tennant, Dakota Wesleyan University